THE  ESCAPE  OF  MR.  TRIMM 


•     -.'          i  ,: 

THE  ESCAPE 
OF  MR.  TRIMM 

HIS  PLIGHT  AND  OTHER  PLIGHTS 
BY 

IRVIN  S.  COBB 

AUTHOR  OF  "BACK  HOME"  "COBB'S  BILL  OF  FARE" 
"COBB'S  ANATOMY"  ETC. 


NEW  YORK 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT,  igiO,  igil,  1912  AMD  IQl 

BY  THE  CURTIS  PUBLISHING  COMPAHY 


COPYRIGHT,   1918 
BY  THE  FRANK  A.  MUNSEY  COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT,  191 3 
BY  GEORGE  H.  DORAM  COMPANY 


TO  MY  WIFE 


CONTENTS 


I.  THE  ESCAPE  OF  MR.  TRIMM 3 

II.  THE  BELLED  BUZZARD 54 

III.  AN  OCCURRENCE  UP  A  SIDE  STREET         ...  79 

IV.  ANOTHER  OF  THOSE  CUB  REPORTER  STORIES       .  96 
V.  SMOKE  OF  BATTLE 142 

VI.  THE  EXIT  OF  ANSE  DUGMORE 179 

VII.  To  THE  EDITOR  OF  THE  SUN 202 

VIII.  FISHHEAD 244 

IX.  GUILTY  AS  CHARGED              .      .  •   .      .      .  260 


[  vii 


THE   ESCAPE   OF  MR.   TRIMM 


I 

THE   ESCAPE   OF   MR.    TRIMM 


MR.  TRIMM,  recently  president  of  the 
late  Thirteenth  National  Bank,  was 
taking  a  trip  which  was  different  in 
a  number  of  ways  from  any  he  had 
ever  taken.  To  begin  with,  he  was  used  to 
parlor  cars  and  Pullmans  and  even  luxurious 
private  cars  when  he  went  anywhere;  whereas 
now  he  rode  with  a  most  mixed  company  in  a 
dusty,  smelly  day  coach.  In  the  second  place, 
his  traveling  companion  was  not  such  a  one 
as  Mr.  Trimm  would  have  chosen  had  the 
choice  been  left  to  him,  being  a  stupid-looking 
German-American  with  a  drooping,  yellow 
mustache.  And  in  the  third  place,  Mr. 
Trimm's  plump  white  hands  were  folded  in 
his  lap,  held  in  a  close  and  enforced  compan 
ionship  by  a  new  and  shiny  pair  of  Bean's 
Latest  Model  Little  Giant  handcuffs.  Mr. 
Trimm  was  on  his  way  to  the  Federal  peniten 
tiary  to  serve  twelve  years  at  hard  labor  for 
breaking,  one  way  or  another,  about  all  the 

__ _ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

laws   that   are   presumed   to   govern   national 
banks. 

All  the  time  Mr.  Trimm  was  in  the  Tombs, 
fighting  for  a  new  trial,  a  certain  question  had 
lain  in  his  mind  unasked  and  unanswered. 
Through  the  seven  months  of  his  stay  in  the 
jail  that  question  had  been  always  at  the  back 
part  of  his  head,  ticking  away  there  like  a 
little  watch  that  never  needed  winding.  A 
dozen  times  a  day  it  would  pop  into  his  thoughts 
and  then  go  away,  only  to  come  back  again. 

When  Copley  was  taken  to  the  penitentiary 
—  Copley  being  the  cashier  who  got  off  with 
a  lighter  sentence  because  the  judge  and  jury 
held  him  to  be  no  more  than  a  blind  accomplice 
in  the  wrecking  of  the  Thirteenth  National  — 
Mr.  Trimm  read  closely  every  line  that  the 
papers  carried  about  Copley's  departure.  But 
none  of  them  had  seen  fit  to  give  the  young 
cashier  more  than  a  short  and  colorless  para 
graph.  For  Copley  was  only  a  small  figure 
in  the  big  intrigue  that  had  startled  the  country; 
Copley  didn't  have  the  money  to  hire  big  law 
yers  to  carry  his  appeal  to  the  higher  courts 
for  him;  Copley's  wife  was  keeping  boarders; 
and  as  for  Copley  himself,  he  had  been  wearing 
stripes  several  months  now. 

With  Mr.  Trimm  it  had  been  vastly  different. 
From  the  very  beginning  he  had  held  the  public 
eye.  His  bearing  in  court  when  the  jury  came 

in  with  their  judgment;   his  cold  defiance  when 

_ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

the  judge,  in  pronouncing  sentence,  mercilessly 
arraigned  him  and  the  system  of  finance  for 
which  he  stood;  the  manner  of  his  life  in  the 
Tombs;  his  spectacular  fight  to  beat  the 
verdict,  had  all  been  worth  columns  of  news 
paper  space.  If  Mr.  Trimm  had  been  a  popular 
poisoner,  or  a  society  woman  named  as  co 
respondent  in  a  sensational  divorce  suit,  the 
papers  could  not  have  been  more  generous  in 
their  space  allotments.  And  Mr.  Trimm  in 
his  cell  had  read  all  of  it  with  smiling  con 
tempt,  even  to  the  semi-hysterical  outpourings 
of  the  lady  special  writers  who  called  him  The 
Iron  Man  of  Wall  Street  and  undertook  to 
analyze  his  emotions  —  and  missed  the  mark 
by  a  thousand  miles  or  two. 

Things  had  been  smoothed  as  much  as 
possible  for  him  in  the  Tombs,  for  money  and 
the  power  of  it  will  go  far  toward  ironing  out 
even  the  corrugated  routine  of  that  big  jail. 
He  had  a  large  cell  to  himself  in  the  airiest, 
brightest  corridor.  His  meals  were  served  by 
a  caterer  from  outside.  Although  he  ate  them 
without  knife  or  fork,  he  soon  learned  that  a 
spoon  and  the  fingers  can  accomplish  a  good 
deal  when  backed  by  a  good  appetite,  and  Mr. 
Trimm's  appetite  was  uniformly  good.  The 
warden  and  his  underlings  had  been  models 
of  official  kindliness;  the  newspapers  had  sent 
their  brightest  young  men  to  interview  him 
whenever  he  felt  like  talking,  which  wasn't 

often;    and  surely  his  lawyers  had  done  all  in 
_ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

his  behalf  that  money  —  a  great  deal  of  money 
—  could  do.  Perhaps  it  was  because  of  these 
things  that  Mr.  Trimm  had  never  been  able 
to  bring  himself  to  realize  that  he  was  the 
Hobart  W.  Trimm  who  had  been  sentenced  to 
the  Federal  prison;  it  seemed  to  him,  somehow, 
that  he,  personally,  was  merely  a  spectator 
standing  to  one  side  watching  the  fight  of 
another  man  to  dodge  the  penitentiary. 

However,  he  didn't  fail  to  give  the  other  man 
the  advantage  of  every  chance  that  money 
would  buy.  This  sense  of  aloofness  to  the 
whole  thing  had  persisted  even  when  his 
personal  lawyer  came  to  him  one  night  in  the 
early  fall  and  told  him  that  the  court  of  last 
possible  resort  had  denied  the  last  possible 
motion.  Mr.  Trimm  cut  the  lawyer  short 
with  a  shake  of  his  head  as  the  other  began 
saying  something  about  the  chances  of  a  pardon 
from  the  President.  Mr.  Trimm  wasn't  in 
the  habit  of  letting  men  deceive  him  with  idle 
words.  No  President  would  pardon  him,  and 
he  knew  it. 

"Never  mind  that,  Walling,"  he  said  steadily, 
when  the  lawyer  offered  to  come  to  see  him 
again  before  he  started  for  prison  the  next 
day.  "If  you'll  see  that  a  drawing-room'  on 
the  train  is  reserved  for  me  —  for  us,  I  mean  — 
and  all  that  sort  of  thing,  I'll  not  detain  you 
any  further.  I  have  a  good  many  things  to  do 
tonight.  Good  night." 

"Such  a  man,  such  a  man,"  said  Walling  to 

_ _  _  _. 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

himself  as  he  climbed  into  his  car;  "all  chilled 
steel  and  brains.  And  they  are  going  to  lock 
that  brain  up  for  twelve  years.  It's  a  crime," 
said  Walling,  and  shook  his  head.  Walling 
always  said  it  was  a  crime  when  they  sent  a 
client  of  his  to  prison.  To  his  credit  be  it 
said,  though,  they  sent  very  few  of  them 
there.  Walling  made  as  high  as  fifty  thousand 
a  year  at  criminal  law.  Some  of  it  was  very 
criminal  law  indeed.  His  specialty  was  pick 
ing  holes  in  the  statutes  faster  than  the  legisla 
ture  could  make  them  and  provide  them  and 
putty  them  up  with  amendments.  This  was 
the  first  case  he  had  lost  in  a  good  long  time. 

When  Jerry,  the  turnkey,  came  for  him  in 
the  morning  Mr.  Trimm  had  made  as  careful 
a  toilet  as  the  limited  means  at  his  command 
permitted,  and  he  had  eaten  a  hearty  break 
fast  and  was  ready  to  go,  all  but  putting  on  his 
hat.  Looking  the  picture  of  well-groomed, 
close-buttoned,  iron-gray  middle  age,  Mr. 
Trimm  followed  the  turnkey  through  the  long 
corridor  and  down  the  winding  iron  stairs  to 
the  warden's  office.  He  gave  no  heed  to  the 
curious  eyes  that  followed  him  through  the 
barred  doors  of  many  cells;  his  feet  rang 
briskly  on  the  flags. 

The  warden,  Hallam,  was  there  in  the  private 
office  with  another  man,  a  tall,  raw-boned 
man  with  a  drooping,  straw-colored  mustache 

and  the  unmistakable  look  about  him  of  the 
_ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

police  officer.  Mr.  Trimm  knew  without  being 
told  that  this  was  the  man  who  would  take 
him  to  prison.  The  stranger  was  standing  at 
a  desk,  signing  some  papers. 

"Sit  down,  please,  Mr.  Trimm,"  said  the 
warden  with  a  nervous  cordiality .  "Be  through 
here  in  just  one  minute.  This  is  Deputy 
Marshal  Meyers,"  he  added. 

Mr.  Trimm  started  to  tell  this  Mr.  Meyers 
he  was  glad  to  meet  him,  but  caught  himself  and 
merely  nodded.  The  man  stared  at  him  with 
neither  interest  nor  curiosity  in  his  dull  blue 
eyes.  The  warden  moved  over  toward  the 
door. 

"Mr.  Trimm,"  he  said,  clearing  his  throat, 
"I  took  the  liberty  of  calling  a  cab  to  take 
you  gents  up  to  the  Grand  Central.  It's 
out  front  now.  But  there's  a  big  crowd  of 
reporters  and  photographers  and  a  lot  of  other 
people  waiting,  and  if  I  was  you  I'd  slip  out 
the  back  way  —  one  of  my  men  will  open  the 
yard  gate  for  you  —  and  jump  aboard  the 
subway  down  at  Worth  Street.  Then  you'll 
miss  those  fellows." 

"Thank  you,  Warden  —  very  kind  of  you," 
said  Mr.  Trimm  in  that  crisp,  businesslike  way 
of  his.  He  had  been  crisp  and  businesslike 
all  his  life.  He  heard  a  door  opening  softly 
behind  him,  and  when  he  turned  to  look  he 
saw  the  warden  slipping  out,  furtively,  in 
almost  an  embarrassed  fashion. 

"Well,"  said  Meyers,  "all  ready?" 

[8] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

"Yes,"  said  Mr.  Trimm,  and  he  made  as  if 
to  rise. 

"Wait  one  minute,"  said  Meyers. 

He  half  turned  his  back  on  Mr.  Trimm  and 
fumbled  at  the  side  pocket  of  his  ill-hanging 
coat.  Something  inside  of  Mr.  Trimm  gave 
the  least  little  jump,  and  the  question  that 
had  ticked  away  so  busily  all  those  months 
began  to  buzz,  buzz  in  his  ears;  but  it  was 
only  a  handkerchief  the  man  was  getting  out. 
Doubtless  he  was  going  to  mop  his  face. 

He  didn't  mop  his  face,  though.  He  unrolled 
the  handkerchief  slowly,  as  if  it  contained 
something  immensely  fragile  and  valuable,  and 
then,  thrusting  it  back  in  his  pocket,  he  faced 
Mr.  Trimm.  He  was  carrying  in  his  hands 
a  pair  of  handcuffs  that  hung  open- jawed. 
The  jaws  had  little  notches  in  them,  like 
teeth  that  could  bite.  The  question  that  had 
ticked  in  Mr.  Trimm's  head  was  answered  at 
last  — in  the  sight  of  these  steel  things  with 
their  notched  jaws. 

Mr.  Trimm  stood  up  and,  with  a  movement 
as  near  to  hesitation  as  he  had  ever  been  guilty 
of  in  his  life,  held  out  his  hands,  backs  upward. 

"I  guess  you're  new  at  this  kind  of  thing," 
said  Meyers,  grinning.  "This  here  way  — 
one  at  a  time." 

He  took  hold  of  Mr.  Trimm's  right  hand, 
turned  it  sideways  and  settled  one  of  the 
steel  cuffs  over  the  top  of  the  wrist,  flipping 
the  notched  jaw  up  from  beneath  and  press- 

__ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

ing  it  in  so  that  it  locked  automatically  with 
a  brisk  little  click.  Slipping  the  locked  cuff 
back  and  forth  on  Mr.  Trimm's  lower  arm  like 
a  man  adjusting  a  part  of  machinery,  and  then 
bringing  the  left  hand  up  to  meet  the  right,  he 
treated  it  the  same  way.  Then  he  stepped 
back. 

Mr.  Trimm  hadn't  meant  to  protest.  The 
word  came  unbidden. 

"This  —  this  isn't  necessary,  is  it?"  he 
asked  in  a  voice  that  was  husky  and  didn't 
seem  to  belong  to  him. 

"Yep,"  said  Meyers.  "Standin'  orders  is 
play  no  favorites  and  take  no  chances.  But 
you  won't  find  them  things  uncomfortable. 
Lightest  pair  there  was  in  the  office,  and  I 
fixed  'em  plenty  loose." 

For  half  a  minute  Mr.  Trimm  stood  like  a 
rooster  hypnotized  by  a  chalkmark,  his  arms 
extended,  his  eyes  set  on  his  bonds.  His 
hands  had  fallen  perhaps  four  inches  apart, 
and  in  the  space  between  his  wrists  a  little 
chain  was  stretched  taut.  In  the  mounting 
tumult  that  filled  his  brain  there  sprang  before 
Mr.  Trimm's  consciousness  a  phrase  he  had 
heard  or  read  somewhere,  the  title  of  a  story 
or,  perhaps,  it  was  a  headline  —  The  Grips 
of  the  Law.  The  Grips  of  the  Law  were  upon 
Mr.  Trimm  —  he  felt  them  now  for  the  first 
time  in  these  shiny  wristlets  and  this  bit  of 
chain  that  bound  his  wrists  and  filled  his  whole 
body  with  a  strange,  sinking  feeling  that  made 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

him  physically  sick.  A  sudden  sweat  beaded  out 
on  Mr.  Trimm's  face,  turning  it  slick  and  wet. 

He  had  a  handkerchief,  a  fine  linen  handker 
chief  with  a  hemstitched  border  and  a  mono 
gram  on  it,  in  the  upper  breast  pocket  of  his 
buttoned  coat.  He  tried  to  reach  it.  His 
hands  went  up,  twisting  awkwardly  like  crab 
claws.  The  fingers  of  both  plucked  out  the 
handkerchief.  Holding  it  so,  Mr.  Trimm 
mopped  the  sweat  away.  The  links  of  the 
handcuffs  fell  in  upon  one  another  and  length 
ened  out  again  at  each  movement,  filling  the 
room  with  a  smart  little  sound. 

He  got  the  handkerchief  stowed  away  with 
the  same  clumsiness.  He  raised  the  manacled 
hands  to  his  hat  brim,  gave  it  a  downward 
pull  that  brought  it  over  his  face  and  then, 
letting  his  short  arms  slide  down  upon  his 
plump  stomach,  he  faced  the  man  who  had 
put  the  fetters  upon  him,  squaring  his  shoul 
ders  back.  But  it  was  hard,  somehow,  for  him 
to  square  his  shoulders  —  perhaps  because  of 
his  hands  being  drawn  so  closely  together. 
And  his  eyes  would  waver  and  fall  upon  his 
wrists.  Mr.  Trimm  had  a  feeling  that  the  skin 
must  be  stretched  very  tight  on  his  jawbones 
and  his  forehead. 

"Isn't  there  some  way  to  hide  these  —  these 
things?" 

He  began  by  blurting  and  ended  by  faltering 
it.  His  hands  shuffled  together,  one  over, 
then  under  the  other. 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

"Here's  a  way,"  said  Meyers.  "This'll 
help." 

He  bestirred  himself,  folding  one  of  the 
chained  hands  upon  the  other,  tugging  at  the 
white  linen  cuffs  and  drawing  the  coat  sleeves 
of  his  prisoner  down  over  the  bonds  as  far  as 
the  chain  would  let  them  come. 

"There's  the  notion,"  he  said.  "Just  do 
that-a-way  and  them  bracelets  won't  hardly 
show  a-tall.  Ready?  Let's  be  movin',  then." 

But  handcuffs  were  never  meant  to  be  hidden. 
Merely  a  pair  of  steel  rings  clamped  to  one's 
wrists  and  coupled  together  with  a  scrap  of 
chain,  but  they'll  twist  your  arms  and  hamper 
the  movements  of  your  body  in  a  way  to  con 
stantly  catch  the  eye  of  the  passer-by.  When 
a  man  is  coming  toward  you  you  can  tell  that 
he  is  handcuffed  before  you  see  the  cuffs. 

Mr.  Trimm  was  never  able  to  recall  after 
ward  exactly  how  he  got  out  of  the  Tombs. 
He  had  a  confused  memory  of  a  gate  that  was 
swung  open  by  some  one  whom  Mr.  Trimm 
saw  only  from  the  feet  to  the  waist;  then  he 
and  his  companion  were  out  on  Lafayette 
Street,  speeding  south  toward  the  subway 
entrance  at  Worth  Street,  two  blocks  below, 
with  the  marshal's  hand  cupped  under  Mr. 
Trimm's  right  elbow  and  Mr.  Trimm's  plump 
legs  almost  trotting  in  their  haste.  For  a 
moment  it  looked  as  if  the  warden's  well- 
meant  artifice  would  serve  them. 

But  New  York  reporters  are  up  to  the  tricks 

_ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

of  people  who  want  to  evade  them.  At  the 
sight  of  them  a  sentry  reporter  on  the  corner 
shouted  a  warning  which  was  instantly  caught 
up  and  passed  on  by  another  picket  stationed 
half-way  down  the  block;  and  around  the  wall 
of  the  Tombs  came  pelting  a  flying  mob  of 
newspaper  photographers  and  reporters,  with 
a  choice  rabble  behind  them.  Foot  passengers 
took  up  the  chase,  not  knowing  what  it  was 
about,  but  sensing  a  free  show.  Truckmen 
halted  their  teams,  jumped  down  from  their 
wagon  seats  and  joined  in.  A  man-chase  is 
one  of  the  pleasantest  outdoor  sports  that  a 
big  city  like  New  York  can  offer  its  people. 

Fairly  running  now,  the  manacled  banker 
and  the  deputy  marshal  shot  down  the  winding 
steps  into  the  subway  a  good  ten  yards  ahead 
of  the  foremost  pursuers.  But  there  was  one 
delay,  while  Meyers  skirmished  with  his  free 
hand  in  his  trousers'  pocket  for  a  dime  for  the 
tickets,  and  another  before  a  northbound  local 
rolled  into  the  station.  Shouted  at,  jeered  at, 
shoved  this  way  and  that,  panting  in  gulping 
breaths,  for  he  was  stout  by  nature  and  staled 
by  lack  of  exercise,  Mr.  Trimm,  with  Meyers 
clutching  him  by  the  arm,  was  fairly  shot 
aboard  one  of  the  cars,  at  the  apex  of  a  human 
wedge.  The  astonished  guard  sensed  the  situ 
ation  as  the  scrooging,  shoving,  noisy  wave 
rolled  across  the  platform  toward  the  doors 
which  he  had  opened  and,  thrusting  the  officer 
and  his  prisoner  into  the  narrow  platform  space 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

behind  him,  he  tried  to  form  with  his  body  a 
barrier  against  those  who  came  jamming  in. 

It  didn't  do  any  good.  He  was  brushed 
away,  protesting  and  blustering.  The  excite 
ment  spread  through  the  train,  and  men,  and 
even  women,  left  their  seats,  overflowing  the 
aisles. 

There  is  no  crueler  thing  than  a  city  crowd, 
all  eyes  and  morbid  curiosity.  But  Mr.  Trimm 
didn't  see  the  staring  eyes  on  that  ride  to  the 
Grand  Central.  What  he  saw  was  many  shift 
ing  feet  and  a  hedge  of  legs  shutting  him  in 
closely  —  those  and  the  things  on  his  wrists. 
What  the  eyes  of  the  crowd  saw  was  a  small, 
stout  man  who,  for  all  his  bulk,  seemed  to  have 
dried  up  inside  his  clothes  so  that  they  bagged 
on  him  some  places  and  bulged  others,  with 
his  head  tucked  on  his  chest,  his  hat  over  his 
face  and  his  fingers  straining  to  hold  his  coat 
sleeves  down  over  a  pair  of  steel  bracelets. 

Mr.  Trimm  gave  mental  thanks  to  a  Deity 
whose  existence  he  thought  he  had  forgotten 
when  the  gate  of  the  train-shed  clanged  behind 
him,  shutting  out  the  mob  that  had  come  with 
them  all  the  way.  Cameras  had  been  shoved 
in  his  face  like  gun  muzzles,  reporters  had 
scuttled  alongside  him,  dodging  under  Meyers' 
fending  arm  to  shout  questions  in  his  ears. 
He  had  neither  spoken  nor  looked  at  them. 
The  sweat  still  ran  down  his  face,  so  that  when 
finally  he  raised  his  head  in  the  comparative 
quiet  of  the  train-shed  his  skin  was  a  curious 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

gray  under  the  jail  paleness  like  the  color  of 
wet  wood  ashes.  i 

"My  lawyer  promised  to  arrange  for  a  com 
partment —  for  some  private  place  on  the 
train,"  he  said  to  Meyers.  "The  conductor 
ought  to  know." 

They  were  the  first  words  he  had  uttered 
since  he  left  the  Tombs.  Meyers  spoke  to  a 
jaunty  Pullman  conductor  who  stood  along 
side  the  car  where  they  had  halted. 

"No  such  reservation,"  said  the  conductor, 
running  through  his  sheaf  of  slips,  with  his  eyes 
shifting  from  Mr.  Trimm's  face  to  Mr.  Trimm's 
hands  and  back  again,  as  though  he  couldn't 
decide  which  was  the  more  interesting  part  of 
him;  "must  be  some  mistake.  Or  else  it  was 
for  some  other  train.  Too  late  to  change  now 
—  we  pull  out  in  three  minutes." 

"I  reckon  we  better  git  on  the  smoker," 
said  Meyers,  "if  there's  room  there." 

Mr.  Trimm  was  steered  back  again  the  length 
of  the  train  through  a  double  row  of  pop-eyed 
porters  and  staring  trainmen.  At  the  steps 
where  they  stopped  the  instinct  to  stretch  out 
one  hand  and  swing  himself  up  by  the  rail 
operated  automatically  and  his  wrists  got  a 
nasty  twist.  Meyers  and  a  brakeman  prac 
tically  lifted  him  up  the  steps  and  Meyers 
headed  him  into  a  car  that  was  hazy  with  blue 
tobacco  smoke.  He  was  confused  in  his  gait, 
almost  as  if  his  lower  limbs  had  been  fettered, 

too. 

[15] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

The  car  was  full  of  shirt-sleeved  men  who 
stood  up,  craning  their  necks  and  stumbling 
over  each  other  in  their  desire  to  see  him. 
These  men  came  out  into  the  aisle,  so  that 
Meyers  had  to  shove  through  them. 

"This  here'll  do  as  well  as  any,  I  guess," 
said  Meyers.  He  drew  Mr.  Trimm  past  him 
into  the  seat  nearer  the  window  and  sat  down 
alongside  him  on  the  side  next  the  aisle,  settling 
himself  on  the  stuffy  plush  seat  and  breathing 
deeply,  like  a  man  who  had  got  through  the 
hardest  part  of  a  not  easy  job. 

"Smoke?"  he  asked. 

Mr.  Trimm  shook  his  head  without  raising  it. 

"Them  cuffs  feel  plenty  easy?"  was  the 
deputy's  next  question.  He  lifted  Mr.  Trimm's 
hands  as  casually  as  if  they  had  been  his 
hands  and  not  Mr.  Trimm's,  and  looked  at 
them. 

"Seem  to  be  all  right,"  he  said  as  he  let  them 
fall  back.  "Don't  pinch  none,  I  reckon?" 
There  was  no  answer. 

The  deputy  tugged  a  minute  at  his  mus 
tache,  searching  his  arid  mind.  An  idea  came 
to  him.  He  drew  a  newspaper  from  his  pocket, 
opened  it  out  flat  and  spread  it  over  Mr. 
Trimm's  lap  so  that  it  covered  the  chained 
wrists.  Almost  instantly  the  train  was  in 
motion,  moving  through  the  yards. 

"Be  there  in  two  hours  more,"  volunteered 

Meyers.     It  was  late  afternoon.     They  were 

—  __ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

sliding  through  woodlands  with  occasional 
openings  which  showed  meadows  melting  into 
wide,  flat  lands. 

"Want  a  drink?"  said  the  deputy,  next. 
"No?  Well,  I  guess  I'll  have  a  drop  myself. 
Travelin'  fills  a  feller's  throat  full  of  dust." 
He  got  up,  lurching  to  the  motion  of  the  flying 
train,  and  started  forward  to  the  water  cooler 
behind  the  car  door.  He  had  gone  perhaps 
two-thirds  of  the  way  when  Mr.  Trimm  felt 
a  queer,  grinding  sensation  beneath  his  feet; 
it  was  exactly  as  though  the  train  were  trying 
to  go  forward  and  back  at  the  same  time. 
Almost  slowly,  it  seemed  to  him,  the  forward 
end  of  the  car  slued  out  of  its  straight  course, 
at  the  same  time  tilting  up.  There  was  a 
grinding,  roaring,  grating  sound,  and  before 
Mr.  Trimm's  eyes  Meyers  vanished,  tumbling 
forward  out  of  sight  as  the  car  floor  buckled 
under  his  feet.  Then,  as  everything  —  the 
train,  the  earth,  the  sky  —  all  fused  together 
in  a  great  spatter  of  white  and  black,  Mr. 
Trimm,  plucked  from  his  seat  as  though  a 
giant  hand  had  him  by  the  collar,  shot  forward 
through  the  air  over  the  seatbacks,  his  chained 
hands  aloft,  clutching  wildly.  He  rolled  out 
of  a  ragged  opening  where  the  smoker  had 
broken  in  two,  flopped  gently  on  the  sloping 
side  of  the  right-of-way  and  slid  easily  to  the 
bottom,  where  he  lay  quiet  and  still  on  his 
back  in  a  bed  of  weeds  and  wild  grass,  staring 

straight  up. 

_ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

How  many  minutes  he  lay  there  Mr.  Trimm 
didn't  know.  It  may  have  been  the  shrieks 
of  the  victims  or  the  glare  from  the  fire  that 
brought  him  out  of  the  daze.  He  wriggled 
his  body  to  a  sitting  posture,  got  on  his  feet, 
holding  his  head  between  his  coupled  hands, 
and  gazed  full-face  into  the  crowning  railroad 
horror  of  the  year. 

There  were  numbers  of  the  passengers  who 
had  escaped  serious  hurt,  but  for  the  most  part 
these  persons  seemed  to  have  gone  daft  from 
terror  and  shock.  Some  were  running  aim 
lessly  up  and  down  and  some,  a  few,  were 
pecking  feebly  with  improvised  tools  at  the 
wreck,  an  indescribable  jumble  of  ruin,  from 
which  there  issued  cries  of  mortal  agony,  and 
from  which,  at  a  point  where  two  locomotives 
were  lying  on  their  sides,  jammed  together  like 
fighting  bucks  that  had  died  with  locked  horns, 
a  tall  flame  already  rippled  and  spread,  send 
ing  up  a  pillar  of  black  smoke  that  rose  straight, 
poisoning  the  clear  blue  of  the  sky.  Nobody 
paid  any  attention  to  Mr.  Trimm  as  he  stood 
swaying  upon  his  feet.  There  wasn't  a  scratch 
on  him.  His  clothes  were  hardly  rumpled, 
his  hat  was  still  on  his  head.  He  stood  a 
minute  and  then,  moved  by  a  sudden  impulse, 
he  turned  round  and  went  running  straight 
away  from  the  railroad  at  the  best  speed  his 
pudgy  legs  could  accomplish,  with  his  arms 
pumping  up  and  down  in  front  of  him 
and  his  fingers  interlaced.  It  was  a  grotesque 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

gait,  almost  like  a  rabbit  hopping  on  its 
hindlegs.  '  * 

Instantly,  almost,  the  friendly  woods  grow 
ing  down  to  the  edge  of  the  fill  swallowed  him 
up.  He  dodged  and  doubled  back  and  forth 
among  the  tree  trunks,  his  small,  patent- 
leathered  feet  skipping  nimbly  over  the  irreg 
ular  turf,  until  he  stopped  for  lack  of  wind  in 
his  lungs  to  carry  him  another  rod.  When 
he  had  got  his  breath  back  Mr.  Trimm  leaned 
against  a  tree  and  bent  his  head  this  way  and 
that,  listening.  No  sound  came  to  his  ears 
except  the  sleepy  calls  of  birds.  As  well  as 
Mr.  Trimm  might  judge  he  had  come  far  into 
the  depths  of  a  considerable  woodland.  Already 
the  shadows  under  the  low  limbs  were  growing 
thick  and  confused  as  the  hurried  twilight  of 
early  September  came  on. 

Mr.  Trimm  sat  down  on  a  natural  cushion  of 
thick  green  moss  between  two  roots  of  an  oak. 
The  place  was  clean  and  soft  and  sweet-scented. 
For  some  little  time  he  sat  there  motionless, 
in  a  sort  of  mental  haze.  Then  his  round  body 
slowly  slid  down  flat  upon  the  moss,  his  head 
lolled  to  one  side  and,  the  reaction  having  come, 
Mr.  Trimm's  limbs  all  relaxed  and  he  went  to 
sleep  straightway. 

After  a  while,  when  the  woods  were  black 
and  still,  the  half-grown  moon  came  up  and, 
sifting  through  a  chink  in  the  canopy  of  leaves 
above,  shone  down  full  on  Mr.  Trimm  as  he 

lay  snoring  gently  with  his  mouth  open  and 
_ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

his  hands  rising  and  falling  on  his  breast.  The 
moonlight  struck  upon  the  Little  Giant  hand 
cuffs,  making  them  look  like  quicksilver. 

Toward  daylight  it  turned  off  sharp  and  cool. 
The  dogwoods  which  had  been  a  solid  color  at 
nightfall  now  showed  pink  in  one  light  and 
green  in  another,  like  changeable  silk,  as  the 
first  level  rays  of  the  sun  came  up  over  the 
rim  of  the  earth  and  made  long,  golden  lanes 
between  the  tree  trunks.  Mr.  Trimm  opened 
his  eyes  slowly,  hardly  sensing  for  the  first 
moment  or  two  how  he  came  to  be  lying  under 
a  canopy  of  leaves,  and  gaped,  seeking  to 
stretch  his  arms.  At  that  he  remembered 
everything;  he  haunched  his  shoulders  against 
the  tree  roots  and  wriggled  himself  up  to  a 
sitting  position  where  he  stayed  for  a  while, 
letting  his  mind  run  over  the  sequence  of 
events  that  had  brought  him  where  he  was 
and  taking  inventory  of  the  situation. 

Of  escape  he  had  no  thought.  The  hue  and 
cry  must  be  out  for  him  before  now;  doubtless 
men  were  already  searching  for  him.  It  would 
be  better  for  him  to  walk  in  and  surrender 
than  to  be  taken  in  the  woods  like  an  animal 
escaped  from  a  traveling  menagerie.  But 
the  mere  thought  of  enduring  again  what  he 
had  already  gone  through  —  the  thought  of 
being  tagged  by  crowds  and  stared  at,  with 
his  fetters  on  —  filled  him  with  a  nausea. 
Nothing  that  the  Federal  penitentiary  might 
hold  in  store  for  him  could  equal  the  black, 
~~~ "~  [20]  ~ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

blind  shamef ulness  of  yesterday;  he  knew 
that.  The  thought  of  the  new  ignominy  that 
faced  him  made  Mr.  Trimm  desperate.  He 
had  a  desire  to  burrow  into  the  thicket  yonder 
and  hide  his  face  and  his  chained  hands. 

But  perhaps  he  could  get  the  handcuffs  off  and 
so  go  to  meet  his  captors  in  some  manner  of 
dignity.  Strange  that  the  idea  hadn't  occurred 
to  him  before!  It  seemed  to  Mr.  Trimm  that 
he  desired  to  get  his  two  hands  apart  more 
than  he  had  ever  desired  anything  in  his  whole 
life  before. 

The  hands  had  begun  naturally  to  adjust 
themselves  to  their  enforced  companionship, 
and  it  wasn't  such  a  very  hard  matter,  though 
it  cost  him  some  painful  wrenches  and  much 
twisting  of  the  fingers,  for  Mr.  Trimm  to  get 
his  coat  unbuttoned  and  his  eyeglasses  in  their 
small  leather  case  out  of  his  upper  waistcoat 
pocket.  With  the  glasses  on  his  nose  he  sub 
jected  his  bonds  to  a  critical  examination. 
Each  rounded  steel  band  ran  unbroken  except 
for  the  smooth,  almost  jointless  hinge  and  the 
small  lock  which  sat  perched  on  the  back  of  the 
wrist  in  a  little  rounded  excrescence  like  a  steel 
wart.  In  the  flat  center  of  each  lock  was  a 
small  keyhole  and  alongside  of  it  a  notched 
nub,  the  nub  being  sunk  in  a  minute  depression. 
On  the  inner  side,  underneath,  the  cuffs  slid 
into  themselves  —  two  notches  on  each  show 
ing  where  the  jaws  might  be  tightened  to  fit 

a  smaller  hand  than  his  —  and  right  over  the 

___ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

large  blue  veins  in  the  middle  of  the  wrists  were 
swivel  links,  shackle-bolted  to  the  cuffs  and 
connected  by  a  flat,  slightly  larger  middle  link, 
giving  the  hands  a  palm-to-palm  play  of  not 
more  than  four  or  five  inches.  The  cuffs  did 
not  hurt  —  even  after  so  many  hours  there 
was  no  actual  discomfort  from  them  and  the 
flesh  beneath  them  was  hardly  reddened. 

But  it  didn't  take  Mr.  Trimm  long  to  find 
out  that  they  were  not  to  be  got  off.  He 
tugged  and  pulled,  trying  with  his  fingers  for 
a  purchase.  All  he  did  was  to  chafe  his  skin 
and  make  his  wrists  throb  with  pain.  The 
cuffs  would  go  forward  just  so  far,  then  the 
little  humps  of  bone  above  the  hands  would 
catch  and  hold  them.  • 

Mr.  Trimm  was  not  a  man  to  waste  time  in 
the  pursuit  of  the  obviously  hopeless.  Pres 
ently  he  stood  up,  shook  himself  and  started 
off  at  a  fair  gait  through  the  woods.  The 
sun  was  up  now  and  the  turf  was  all  dappled 
with  lights  and  shadows,  and  about  him  much 
small,  furtive  wild  life  was  stirring.  He  stepped 
along  briskly,  a  strange  figure  for  that  green 
solitude,  with  his  correct  city  garb  and  the 
glint  of  the  steel  at  his  sleeve  ends. 

Presently  he  heard  the  long-drawn,  quaver 
ing,  banshee  wail  of  a  locomotive.  The  sound 
came  from  almost  behind  him,  in  an  opposite 
direction  from  where  he  supposed  the  track 
to  be.  So  he  turned  around  and  went  back 
the  other  way.  He  crossed  a  half-dried-up 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

runlet  and  climbed  a  small  hill,  neither  of 
which  he  remembered  having  met  in  his  flight 
from  the  wreck,  and  in  a  little  while  he  came 
out  upon  the  railroad.  To  the  north  a  little 
distance  the  rails  ran  round  a  curve.  To  the 
south,  where  the  diminishing  rails  running 
through  the  unbroken  woodland  met  in  a  long, 
shiny  V,  he  could  see  a  big  smoke  smudge 
against  the  horizon.  This  smoke  Mr.  Trimm 
knew  must  come  from  the  wreck  —  which  was 
still  burning,  evidently.  As  nearly  as  he 
could  judge  he  had  come  out  of  cover  at  least 
two  miles  above  it.  After  a  moment's  con 
sideration  he  decided  to  go  south  toward  the 
wreck.  Soon  he  could  distinguish  small  dots 
like  ants  moving  in  and  out  about  the  black 
spot,  and  he  knew  these  dots  must  be  men. 

A  whining,  whirring  sound  came  along  the 
rails  to  him  from  behind.  He  faced  about 
just  as  a  handcar  shot  out  around  the  curve 
from  the  north,  moving  with  amazing  rapidity 
under  the  strokes  of  four  men  at  the  pumps. 
Other  men,  laborers  to  judge  by  their  blue 
overalls,  were  sitting  on  the  edges  of  the  car 
with  their  feet  dangling.  For  the  second  time 
within  twelve  hours  impulse  ruled  Mr.  Trimm, 
who  wasn't  given  to  impulses  normally.  He 
made  a  jump  off  the  right-of-way,  and  as  the 
handcar  flashed  by  he  watched  its  flight  from 
the  covert  of  a  weed  tangle. 

But  even  as  the  handcar  was  passing  him 

Mr.  Trimm  regretted  his  hastiness.     He  must 

[231  ~ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

surrender  himself  sooner  or  later;  why  not  to 
these  overalled  laborers,  since  it  was  a  thing 
that  had  to  be  done?  He  slid  out  of  hiding  and 
came  trotting  back  to  the  tracks.  Already 
the  handcar  was  a  hundred  yards  away,  flit 
ting  into  distance  like  some  big,  wonderfully 
fast  bug,  the  figures  of  the  men  at  the  pumps 
rising  and  falling  with  a  walking-beam  regu 
larity.  As  he  stood  watching  them  fade  away 
and  minded  to  try  hailing  them,  yet  still 
hesitating  against  his  judgment,  Mr.  Trimm 
saw  something  white  drop  from  the  hands  of 
one  of  the  blue-clad  figures  on  the  handcar, 
unfold  into  a  newspaper  and  come  fluttering 
back  along  the  tracks  toward  him.  Just  as  he, 
starting  doggedly  ahead,  met  it,  the  little 
ground  breeze  that  had  carried  it  along  died 
out  and  the  paper  dropped  and  flattened  right 
in  front  of  him.  The  front  page  was  upper 
most  and  he  knew  it  must  be  of  that  morning's 
issue,  for  across  the  column  tops  ran  the  flaring 
headline:  "Twenty  Dead  in  Frightful  Collision." 
Squatting  on  the  cindered  track,  Mr.  Trimm 
patted  the  crumpled  sheet  flat  with  his  hands. 
His  eyes  dropped  from  the  first  of  the  glaring 
captions  to  the  second,  to  the  next  —  and 
then  his  heart  gave  a  great  bound  inside  of  him 
and,  clutching  up  the  newspaper  to  his  breast, 
he  bounded  off  the  tracks  back  into  another 
thicket  and  huddled  there  with  the  paper 
spread  on  the  earth  in  front  of  him,  reading  by 

gulps  while  the  chain  that  linked  wrist  to  wrist 
_ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

tinkled  to  the  tremors  running  through  him. 
What  he  had  seen  first,  in  staring  black-face 
type,  was  his  own  name  leading  the  list  of 
known  dead,  and  what  he  saw  now,  broken  up 
into  choppy  paragraphs  and  done  in  the  nervous 
English  of  a  trained  reporter  throwing  a  great 
news  story  together  to  catch  an  edition,  but 
telling  a  clear  enough  story  nevertheless,  was 
a  narrative  in  which  his  name  recurred  again 
and  again.  The  body  of  the  United  States 
deputy  marshal,  Meyers,  frightfully  crushed, 
had  been  taken  from  the  wreckage  of  the 
smoker  —  so  the  double-leaded  story  ran  — 
and  near  to  Meyers  another  body,  with  features 
burned  beyond  recognition,  yet  still  retaining 
certain  distinguishing  marks  of  measurement 
and  contour,  had  been  found  and  identified 
as  that  of  Hobart  W.  Trimm,  the  convicted 
banker.  The  bodies  of  these  two,  with  eight 
een  other  mangled  dead,  had  been  removed 
to  a  town  called  Westfield,  from  which  town 
of  Westfield  the  account  of  the  disaster  had 
been  telegraphed  to  the  New  York  paper.  In 
another  column  farther  along  was  more  about 
Banker  Trimm;  facts  about  his  soiled,  selfish, 
greedy,  successful  life,  his  great  fortune,  his 
trial,  and  a  statement  that,  lacking  any  close 
kin  to  claim  his  body,  his  lawyers  had  been 
notified. 

Mr.   Trimm   read   the   account   through   to 
the  end,  and  as  he  read  the  sense  of  dominant, 

masterful   self-control   came   back   to   him   in 
_____ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

waves.  He  got  up,  taking  the  paper  with 
him,  and  went  back  into  the  deeper  woods, 
moving  warily  and  watchfully.  As  he  went 
his  mind,  trained  to  take  hold  of  problems  and 
wring  the  essence  out  of  them,  was  busy.  Of 
the  charred,  grisly  thing  in  the  improvised 
morgue  at  Westfield,  wherever  that  might  be, 
Mr.  Trimm  took  no  heed  nor  wasted  any  pity. 
All  his  life  he  had  used  live  men  to  work  his 
will,  with  no  thought  of  what  might  come  to 
them  afterward.  The  living  had  served  him, 
why  not  the  dead? 

He  had  other  things  to  think  of  than  this 
dead  proxy  of  his.  He  was  as  good  as  free! 
There  would  be  no  hunt  for  him  now;  no 
alarm  out,  no  posses  combing  every  scrap  of 
cover  for  a  famous  criminal  turned  fugitive. 
He  had  only  to  lie  quiet  a  few  days,  some 
where,  then  get  in  secret  touch  with  Walling. 
Walling  would  do  anything  for  money.  And 
he  had  the  money  —  four  millions  and  more, 
cannily  saved  from  the  crash  that  had  ruined 
so  many  others. 

He  would  alter  his  personal  appearance, 
change  his  name  —  he  thought  of  Duvall, 
which  was  his  mother's  name  —  and  with 
Waiting's  aid  he  would  get  out  of  the  country 
and  into  some  other  country  where  a  man 
might  live  like  a  prince  on  four  millions  or  the 
fractional  part  of  it.  He  thought  of  South 
America,  of  South  Africa,  of  a  private  yacht 
swinging  through  the  little  frequented  islands 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

of  the  South  Seas.  All  that  the  law  had  tried 
to  take  from  him  would  be  given  back.  Wall 
ing  would  work  out  the  details  of  the  escape 
— and  make  it  safe  and  sure — trust  Walling 
for  those  things.  On  one  side  was  the  prison, 
with  its  promise  of  twelve  grinding  years 
sliced  out  of  the  very  heart  of  his  life;  on  the 
other,  freedom,  ease,  security,  even  power. 
Through  Mr.  Trimm's  mind  tumbled  thoughts 
of  concessions,  enterprises,  privileges  —  the 
back  corners  of  the  globe  were  full  of  possibil 
ities  for  the  right  man.  And  between  this 
prospect  and  Mr.  Trimm  there  stood  nothing 
in  the  way,  nothing  but 

Mr.  Trimm's  eyes  fell  upon  his  bound  hands. 
Snug-fitting,  shiny  steel  bands  irked  his  wrists. 
The  Grips  of  the  Law  were  still  upon  him. 

But  only  in  a  way  of  speaking.  It  was  pre 
posterous,  unbelievable,  altogether  out  of  the 
question  that  a  man  with  four  millions  salted 
down  and  stored  away,  a  man  who  all  his  life 
had  been  used  to  grappling  with  the  big  things 
and  wrestling  them  down  into  submission,  a 
man  whose  luck  had  come  to  be  a  byword  — 
and  had  not  it  held  good  even  in  this  last 
emergency?  —  would  be  balked  by  puny  scraps 
of  forged  steel  and  a  trumpery  lock  or  two. 
Why,  these  cuffs  were  no  thicker  than  the  gold 
bands  that  Mr.  Trimm  had  seen  on  the  arms 
of  overdressed  women  at  the  opera.  The 
chain  that  joined  them  was  no  larger  and, 

probably,  no  stronger  than  the  chains  which 
__ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

Mr.  Trimm's  chauffeur  wrapped  around  the 
tires  of  the  touring  car  in  winter  to  keep  the 
wheels  from  skidding  on  the  slush.  There 
would  be  a  way,  surely,  for  Mr.  Trimm  to  free 
himself  from  these  things.  There  must  be  — 
that  was  all  there  was  to  it. 

Mr.  Trimm  looked  himself  over.  His  clothes 
were  not  badly  rumpled;  his  patent-leather 
boots  were  scarcely  scratched.  Without  the 
handcuffs  he  could  pass  unnoticed  anywhere. 
By  night  then  he  must  be  free  of  them  and  on 
his  way  to  some  small  inland  city,  to  stay 
quiet  there  until  the  guarded  telegram  that 
he  would  send  in  cipher  had  reached  Walling. 
There  in  the  woods  by  himself  Mr.  Trimm  no 
longer  felt  the  ignominy  of  his  bonds;  he  felt 
only  the  temporary  embarrassment  of  them 
and  the  need  of  added  precaution  until  he 
should  have  mastered  them. 

He  was  once  more  the  unemotional  man 
of  affairs  who  had  stood  Wall  Street  on  its 
esteemed  head  and  caught  the  golden  streams 
that  trickled  from  its  pockets.  First  making 
sure  that  he  was  in  a  well-screened  covert  of 
the  woods  he  set  about  exploring  all  his  pockets. 
The  coat  pockets  were  comparatively  easy,  now 
that  he  had  got  used  to  using  two  hands  where 
one  had  always  served,  but  it  cost  him  a  lot 
of  twisting  of  his  body  and  some  pain  to  his 
mistreated  wrist  bones  to  bring  forth  the 
contents  of  his  trousers'  pockets.  The  chain 
kinked  time  and  again  as  he  groped  with  the 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

undermost  hand  for  the  openings;  his  dumpy, 
pudgy  form  writhed  grotesquely.  But  finally 
he  finished.  The  search  produced  four  cigars 
somewhat  crumpled  and  frayed;  some  matches 
in  a  gun-metal  case,  a  silver  cigar  cutter,  two 
five-dollar  bills,  a  handful  of  silver  chicken 
feed,  the  leather  case  of  the  eyeglasses,  a  couple 
of  quill  toothpicks,  a  gold  watch  with  a  dan 
gling  fob,  a  notebook  and  some  papers.  Mr. 
Trimm  ranged  these  things  in  a  neat  row  upon 
a  log,  like  a  watchmaker  setting  out  his  kit, 
and  took  swift  inventory  of  them.  Some  he 
eliminated  from  his  design,  stowing  them  back 
in  the  pockets  easiest  to  reach.  He  kept  for 
present  employment  the  match  safe,  the  cigar 
cutter  and  the  watch. 

This  place  where  he  had  halted  would  suit 
his  present  purpose  well,  he  decided.  It  was 
where  an  uprooted  tree,  fallen  across  an  incurv 
ing  bank,  made  a  snug  little  recess  that  was 
closed  in  on  three  sides.  Spreading  the  news 
paper  on  the  turf  to  save  his  knees  from  soiling, 
he  knelt  and  set  to  his  task.  For  the  time  he 
felt  neither  hunger  nor  thirst.  He  had  found 
out  during  his  earlier  experiments  that  the 
nails  of  his  little  fingers,  which  were  trimmed 
to  a  point,  could  invade  the  keyholes  in  the 
little  steel  warts  on  the  backs  of  his  wrists  and 
touch  the  locks.  The  mechanism  had  even 
twitched  a  little  bit  under  the  tickle  of  the 
nail  ends.  So,  having  already  smashed  the  gun- 
metal  match  safe  under  his  heel,  Mr.  Trimm, 
_ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

selected  a  slender-pointed  bit  from  among  its 
fragments  and  got  to  work,  the  left  hand  drawn 
up  under  the  right,  the  fingers  of  the  right 
busy  with  the  lock  of  the  left,  the  chain 
tightening  and  slackening  with  subdued  clink 
ing  sounds  at  each  movement. 

Mr.  Trimm  didn't  know  much  about  picking 
a  lock.  He  had  got  his  money  by  a  higher  form 
of  burglary  that  did  not  require  a  knowledge 
of  lock  picking.  Nor  as  a  boy  had  he  been 
one  to  play  at  mechanics.  He  had  let  other 
boys  make  the  toy  fluttermills  and  the  wooden 
traps  and  the  like,  and  then  he  had  traded 
for  them.  He  was  sorry  now  that  he  hadn't 
given  more  heed  to  the  mechanical  side  of 
things  when  he  was  growing  up. 

He  worked  with  a  deliberate  slowness, 
steadily.  Nevertheless,  it  was  hot  work.  The 
sun  rose  over  the  bank  and  shone  on  him 
through  the  limbs  of  the  uprooted  tree.  His 
hat  was  on  the  ground  alongside  of  him.  The 
sweat  ran  down  his  face,  streaking  it  and  wilt 
ing  his  collar  flat.  The  scrap  of  gun  metal 
kept  slipping  out  of  his  wet  fingers.  Down 
would  go  the  chained  hands  to  scrabble  in  the 
grass  for  it,  and  then  the  picking  would  go  on 
again.  This  happened  a  good  many  times. 
Birds,  nervous  with  the  spirit  that  presages 
the  fall  migration,  flew  back  and  forth  along 
the  creek,  almost  grazing  Mr.  Trimm  some 
times.  A  rain  crow  wove  a  brown  thread  in 
the  green  warp  of  the  bushes  above  his  head. 
~~  [30]  ~~ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

A  chattering  red  squirrel  sat  up  on  a  tree 
limb  to  scold  him.  At  intervals,  distantly, 
came  the  cough  of  laboring  trains,  showing 
that  the  track  must  have  been  cleared.  There 
were  times  when  Mr.  Trimm  thought  he  felt 
the  lock  giving.  These  times  he  would  work 
harder. 

Late  in  the  afternoon  Mr.  Trimm  lay  back 
against  the  bank,  panting.  His  face  was 
splotched  with  red,  and  the  little  hollows  at 
the  sides  of  his  forehead  pulsed  rapidly  up  and 
down  like  the  bellies  of  scared  tree  frogs.  The 
bent  outer  case  of  the  watch  littered  a  bare 
patch  on  the  log;  its  mainspring  had  gone  the 
way  of  the  fragments  of  the  gun-metal  match 
safe  which  were  lying  all  about,  each  a  worn- 
down,  twisted  wisp  of  metal.  The  spring  of 
the  eyeglasses  had  been  confiscated  long  ago 
and  the  broken  crystals  powdered  the  earth 
where  Mr.  Trimm's  toes  had  scraped  a  smooth 
patch.  The  nails  of  the  two  little  fingers  were 
worn  to  the  quick  and  splintered  down  into 
the  raw  flesh.  There  were  countless  tiny 
scratches  and  mars  on  the  locks  of  the  hand 
cuffs,  and  the  steel  wristbands  were  dulled  with 
blood  smears  and  pale-red  tarnishes  of  new 
rust;  but  otherwise  they  were  as  stanch  and 
strong  a  pair  of  Bean's  Latest  Model  Little 
Giant  handcuffs  as  you'd  find  in  any  hard 
ware  store  anywhere. 

The  devilish,  stupid  malignity  of  the  damned 
__ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

things!  With  an  acid  oath  Mr.  Trimm  raised 
his  hands  and  brought  them  down  on  the  log 
violently.  There  was  a  double  click  and  the 
bonds  tightened  painfully,  pressing  the  chafed 
red  skin  white.  Mr.  Trimm  snatched  up  his 
hands  close  to  his  near-sighted  eyes  and  looked. 
One  of  the  little  notches  on  the  under  side  of 
each  cuff  had  disappeared.  It  was  as  if  they 
were  living  things  that  had  turned  and  bitten 
him  for  the  blow  he  gave  them. 

From  the  time  the  sun  went  down  there 
was  a  tingle  of  frost  in  the  air.  Mr.  Trimm 
didn't  sleep  much.  Under  the  squeeze  of  the 
tightened  fetters  his  wrists  throbbed  steadily 
and  racking  cramps  ran  through  his  arms. 
His  stomach  felt  as  though  it  were  tied  into 
knots.  The  water  that  he  drank  from  the 
branch  only  made  his  hunger  sickness  worse. 
His  undergarments,  that  had  been  wet  with 
perspiration,  clung  to  him  clammily.  His 
middle-aged,  tenderly-cared-for  body  called 
through  every  pore  for  clean  linen  and  soap 
and  water  and  rest,  as  his  empty  insides  called 
for  food. 

After  a  while  he  became  so  chilled  that  the 
demand  for  warmth  conquered  his  instinct 
for  caution.  He  felt  about  him  in  the  darkness, 
gathering  scraps  of  dead  wood,  and,  after  break 
ing  several  of  the  matches  that  had  been  in  the 
gun-metal  match  safe,  he  managed  to  strike 
one  and  with  its  tiny  flame  started  a  fire.  He 
[32] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

huddled  almost  over  the  fire,  coughing  when 
the  smoke  blew  into  his  face  and  twisting  and 
pulling  at  his  arms  in  an  effort  to  get  relief 
from  the  everlasting  cramps.  It  seemed  to 
him  that  if  he  could  only  get  an  inch  or  two 
more  of  play  for  his  hands  he  would  be  ever 
so  much  more  comfortable.  But  he  couldn't, 
of  course. 

He  dozed,  finally,  sitting  crosslegged  with 
his  head  sunk  between  his  hunched  shoulders. 
A  pain  in  a  new  place  woke  him.  The  fire 
had  burned  almost  through  the  thin  sole  of  his 
right  shoe,  and  as  he  scrambled  to  his  feet  and 
stamped,  the  clap  of  the  hot  leather  flat  against 
his  blistered  foot  almost  made  him  cry  out. 

Soon  after  sunrise  a  boy  came  riding  a  horse 
down  a  faintly  traced  footpath  along  the 
creek,  driving  a  cow  with  a  bell  on  her  neck 
ahead  of  him.  Mr.  Trimm's  ears  caught  the 
sound  of  the  clanking  bell  before  either  the 
cow  or  her  herder  was  in  sight,  and  he  limped 
away,  running,  skulking  through  the  thick 
cover.  A  pendent  loop  of  a  wild  grapevine, 
swinging  low,  caught  his  hat  and  flipped  it  off 
his  head;  but  Mr.  Trimm,  imagining  pursuit, 
did  not  stop  to  pick  it  up  and  went  on  bare 
headed  until  he  had  to  stop  from  exhaustion. 
He  saw  some  dark-red  berries  on  a  shrub  upon 
which  he  had  trod,  and,  stooping,  he  plucked 
some  of  them  with  his  two  hands  and  put 
three  or  four  in  his  mouth  experimentally. 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

Warned  instantly  by  the  acrid,  burning  taste, 
he  spat  the  crushed  berries  out  and  went  on 
doggedly,  following,  according  to  his  best 
judgment,  a  course  parallel  to  the  railroad. 
It  was  characteristic  of  him,  a  city -raised  man, 
that  he  took  no  heed  of  distances  nor  of  the 
distinguishing  marks  of  the  timber. 

Behind  a  log  at  the  edge  of  a  small  clearing 
in  the  woods  he  halted  some  little  time,  watch 
ing  and  listening.  The  clearing  had  grown 
up  in  sumacs  and  weeds  and  small  saplings 
and  it  seemed  deserted;  certainly  it  was  still. 
Near  the  center  of  it  rose  the  sagging  roof  of 
what  had  been  a  shack  or  a  shed  of  some  sort. 
Stooping  cautiously,  to  keep  his  bare  head 
below  the  tops  of  the  sumacs,  Mr.  Trimm 
made  for  the  ruined  shanty  and  gained  it 
safely.  In  the  midst  of  the  rotted,  punky 
logs  that  had  once  formed  the  walls  he  began 
scraping  with  his  feet.  Presently  he  uncovered 
something.  It  was  a  broken-off  harrow  tooth, 
scaled  like  a  long,  red  fish  with  the  crusted  rust 
of  years. 

Mr.  Trimm  rested  the  lower  rims  of  his  hand 
cuffs  on  the  edge  of  an  old,  broken  watering 
trough,  worked  the  pointed  end  of  the  rust- 
crusted  harrow  tooth  into  the  flat  middle  link 
of  the  chain  as  far  as  it  would  go,  and  then 
with  one  hand  on  top  of  the  other  he  pressed 
downward  with  all  his  might.  The  pain  in  his 
wrists  made  him  stop  this  at  once.  The  link 
had  not  sprung  or  given  in  the  least,  but  the 

~ [34] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

twisting  pressure  had  almost  broken  his  wrist 
bones.  He  let  the  harrow  tooth  fall,  knowing 
that  it  would  never  serve  as  a  lever  to  free  him 
—  which,  indeed,  he  had  known  all  along  — 
and  sat  on  the  side  of  the  trough,  rubbing  his 
wrists  and  thinking. 

He  had  another  idea.  It  came  into  his  mind 
as  a  vague  suggestion  that  fire  had  certain 
effects  upon  certain  metals.  He  kindled  a 
fire  of  bits  of  the  rotted  wood,  and  when  the 
flames  ran  together  and  rose  slender  and  straight 
in  a  single  red  thread  he  thrust  the  chain  into 
it,  holding  his  hands  as  far  apart  as  possible 
in  the  attitude  of  a  player  about  to  catch  a 
bounced  ball.  But  immediately  the  pain  of 
that  grew  unendurable  too,  and  he  leaped 
back,  jerking  his  hands  away.  He  had  suc 
ceeded  only  in  blackening  the  steel  and  putting 
a  big  water  blister  on  one  of  his  wrists  right 
where  the  shackle  bolt  would  press  upon  it. 

Where  he  huddled  down  in  the  shelter  of 
one  of  the  fallen  walls  he  noticed,  presently, 
a  strand  of  rusted  fence  wire  still  held  to  half- 
tottering  posts  by  a  pair  of  blackened  staples; 
it  was  part  of  a  pen  that  had  been  used  once 
for  chickens  or  swine.  Mr.  Trimm  tried  the 
wire  with  his  fingers.  It  was  firm  and  springy. 
Rocking  and  groaning  with  the  pain  of  it,  he 
nevertheless  began  sliding  the  chain  back  and 
forth,  back  and  forth  along  the  strand  of  wire. 

Eventually    the    wire,    weakened    by    age, 

snapped  in  two.     A  tiny  shined  spot,  hardly 
__ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

deep  enough  to  be  called  a  nick,  in  its  tar 
nished,  smudged  surface  was  all  the  mark  that 
the  chain  showed. 

Staggering  a  little  and  putting  his  feet 
down  unsteadily,  Mr.  Trimm  left  the  clearing, 
heading  as  well  as  he  could  tell  eastward,  away 
from  the  railroad.  After  a  mile  or  two  he  came 
to  a  dusty  wood  road  winding  downhill. 

To  the  north  of  the  clearing  where  Mr. 
Trimm  had  halted  were  a  farm  and  a  group 
of  farm  buildings.  To  the  southward  a  mile 
or  so  was  a  cluster  of  dwellings  set  in  the  midst 
of  more  farm  lands,  with  a  shop  or  two  and  a 
small  white  church  with  a  green  spire  in  the 
center.  Along  a  road  that  ran  northward  from 
the  hamlet  to  the  solitary  farm  a  ten-year-old 
boy  came,  carrying  a  covered  tin  pail.  A 
young  gray  squirrel  flirted  across  the  wagon 
ruts  ahead  of  him  and  darted  up  a  chestnut 
sapling.  The  boy  put  the  pail  down  at  the 
side  of  the  road  and  began  looking  for  a  stone 
to  throw  at  the  squirrel. 

Mr.  Trimm  slid  out  from  behind  a  tree.  A 
hemstitched  handkerchief,  grimed  and  stained, 
was  loosely  twisted  around  his  wrists,  partly 
hiding  the  handcuffs.  He  moved  along  with 
a  queer,  sliding  gait,  keeping  as  much  of  his 
body  as  he  could  turned  from  the  youngster. 
The  ears  of  the  little  chap  caught  the  faint 
scuffle  of  feet  and  he  spun  around  on  his  bare 
heel. 

"  My  boy,  would  you "  Mr.  Trimm  began. 

_  __ ._ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

The  boy's  round  eyes  widened  at  the  appari 
tion  that  was  sidling  toward  him  in  so  strange 
a  fashion,  and  then,  taking  fright,  he  dodged 
past  Mr.  Trimm  and  ran  back  the  way  he  had 
come,  as  fast  as  his  slim  brown  legs  could  take 
him.  In  half  a  minute  he  was  out  of  sight 
round  a  bend. 

Had  the  boy  looked  back  he  would  have 
seen  a  still  more  curious  spectacle  than  the 
one  that  had  frightened  him.  He  would  have 
seen  a  man  worth  four  million  dollars  down  on 
his  knees  in  the  yellow  dust,  pawing  with 
chained  hands  at  the  tight-fitting  lid  of  the 
tin  pail,  and  then,  when  he  had  got  the  lid  off, 
drinking  the  fresh,  warm  milk  which  the  pail 
held  with  great,  choking  gulps,  uttering  little 
mewing,  animal  sounds  as  he  drank,  while 
the  white,  creamy  milk  ran  over  his  chin  and 
splashed  down  his  breast  in  little,  spurting 
streams. 

But  the  boy  didn't  look  back.  He  ran  all 
the  way  home  and  told  his  mother  he  had  seen 
a  wild  man  on  the  road  to  the  village;  and 
later,  when  his  father  came  in  from  the  fields, 
he  was  soundly  thrashed  for  letting  the  sight 
of  a  tramp  make  him  lose  a  good  tin  bucket 
and  half  a  gallon  of  milk  worth  six  cents  a 
quart. 

The  rich,  fresh  milk  put  life  into  Mr.  Trimm. 
He  rested  the  better  for  it  during  the  early 
part  of  that  night  in   a  haw  thicket.     Only 
fifl 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

the  sharp,  darting  pains  in  his  wrists  kept  rous 
ing  him  to  temporary  wakefulness.  In  one 
of  those  intervals  of  waking  the  plan  that  had 
been  sketchily  forming  in  his  mind  from  the 
time  he  had  quit  the  clearing  in  the  woods  took 
on  a  definite,  fixed  shape.  But  how  was  he 
with  safety  to  get  the  sort  of  aid  he  needed, 
and  where? 

Canvassing  tentative  plans  in  his  head,  he 
dozed  off  again. 

On  a  smooth  patch  of  turf  behind  the  black 
smith  shop  three  yokels  were  languidly  pitch 
ing  horseshoes  —  "quaits"  they  called  them 
—  at  a  stake  driven  in  the  earth.  Just  beyond, 
the  woods  shredded  out  into  a  long,  yellow  and 
green  peninsula  which  stretched  up  almost  to 
the  back  door  of  the  smithy,  so  that  late  of 
afternoons  the  slanting  shadows  of  the  near- 
most  trees  fell  on  its  roof  of  warped  shingles. 
At  the  extreme  end  of  this  point  of  woods  Mr. 
Trimm  was  squatted  behind  a  big  boulder, 
squinting  warily  through  a  thick-fringed  cur 
tain  of  ripened  goldenrod  tops  and  sumacs, 
heavy-headed  with  their  dark-red  tapers.  He 
had  been  there  more  than  an  hour,  cautiously 
waiting  his  chance  to  hail  the  blacksmith, 
whose  figure  he  could  make  out  in  the  smoky 
interior  of  his  shop,  passing  back  and  forth  in 
front  of  a  smudgy  forge  fire  and  rattling  metal 
against  metal  in  intermittent  fits  of  professional 
activity. 

[38] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

From  where  Mr.  Trimm  watched  to  where 
the  horseshoe-pitching  game  went  on  was  not 
more  than  sixty  feet.  He  could  hear  what 
the  players  said  and  even  see  the  little  puffs 
of  dust  rise  when  one  of  them  clapped  his 
hands  together  after  a  pitch.  He  judged  by 
the  signs  of  slackening  interest  that  they  would 
be  stopping  soon  and,  he  hoped,  going  clear 
away. 

But  the  smith  loafed  out  of  his  shop  and, 
after  an  exchange  of  bucolic  banter  with  the 
three  of  them,  he  took  a  hand  in  their  game 
himself.  He  wore  no  coat  or  waistcoat  and, 
as  he  poised  a  horseshoe  for  his  first  cast  at 
the  stake,  Mr.  Trimm  saw,  pinned  flat  against 
the  broad  strap  of  his  suspenders,  a  shiny, 
silvery-looking  disk.  Having  pitched  the  shoe, 
the  smith  moved  over  into  the  shade,  so  that 
he  almost  touched  the  clump  of  undergrowth 
that  half  buried  Mr.  Trimm's  protecting 
boulder.  The  near-sighted  eyes  of  the  fugi 
tive  banker  could  make  out  then  what  the  flat, 
silvery  disk  was,  and  Mr.  Trimm  cowered 
low  in  his  covert  behind  the  rock,  holding  his 
hands  down  between  his  knees,  fearful  that  a 
gleam  from  his  burnished  wristlets  might  strike 
through  the  screen  of  weed  growth  and  catch 
the  inquiring  eye  of  the  smith.  So  he  stayed, 
not  daring  to  move,  until  a  dinner  horn  sounded 
somewhere  in  the  cluster  of  cottages  beyond, 
and  the  smith,  closing  the  doors  of  his  shop, 

went  away  with  the  three  yokels. 

[39]        ~ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

Then  Mr.  Trimm,  stooping  low,  stole  back 
into  the  deep  woods  again.  In  his  extremity 
he  was  ready  to  risk  making  a  bid  for  the 
hire  of  a  blacksmith's  aid  to  rid  himself  of 
his  bonds,  but  not  a  blacksmith  who  wore  a 
deputy  sheriffs  badge  pinned  to  his  suspenders. 

He  caught  himself  scraping  his  wrists  up 
and  down  again  against  the  rough,  scrofulous 
trunk  of  a  shellbark  hickory.  The  irritation 
was  comforting  to  the  swollen  skin.  The 
cuffs,  which  kept  catching  on  the  bark  and 
snagging  small  fragments  of  it  loose,  seemed 
to  Mr.  Trimm  to  have  been  a  part  and  parcel 
of  him  for  a  long  time  —  almost  as  long  a  time 
as  he  could  remember.  But  the  hands  which 
they  clasped  so  close  seemed  like  the  hands  of 
somebody  else.  There  was  a  numbness  about 
them  that  made  them  feel  as  though  they  were 
a  stranger's  hands  which  never  had  belonged 
to  him.  As  he  looked  at  them  with  a  sort  of 
vague  curiosity  they  seemed  to  swell  and  grow, 
these  two  strange,  fettered  hands,  until  they 
measured  yards  across,  while  the  steel  bands 
shrunk  to  the  thinness  of  piano  wire,  cutting 
deeper  and  deeper  into  the  flesh.  Then  the 
hands  in  turn  began  to  shrink  down  and  the 
cuffs  to  grow  up  into  great,  thick  things  as 
cumbersome  as  the  couplings  of  a  freight  car. 
A  voice  that  Mr.  Trimm  dimly  recognized  as 
his  own  was  saying  something  about  four 
million  dollars  over  and  over  again. 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

Mr.  Trimm  roused  up  and  shook  his  head 
angrily  to  clear  it.  He  rubbed  his  eyes  free 
of  the  clouding  delusion.  It  wouldn't  do  for 
him  to  be  getting  light-headed. 

On  a  flat,  shelving  bluff,  forty  feet  above  a 
cut  through  which  the  railroad  ran  at  a  point 
about  five  miles  north  of  where  the  collision 
had  occurred,  a  tramp  was  busy,  just  before 
sundown,  cooking  something  in  an  old  wash- 
boiler  that  perched  precariously  on  a  fire  of 
wood  coals.  This  tramp  was  tall  and  spindle- 
legged,  with  reddish  hair  and  a  pale,  beardless, 
freckled  face  with  no  chin  to  it  and  not  much 
forehead,  so  that  it  ran  out  to  a  peak  like  the 
profile  of  some  featherless,  unpleasant  sort  of 
fowl.  The  skirts  of  an  old,  ragged  overcoat 
dangled  grotesquely  about  his  spare  shanks. 

Desperate  as  his  plight  had  become,  Mr. 
Trimm  felt  the  old  sick  shame  at  the  prospect 
of  exposing  himself  to  this  knavish-looking 
vagabond  whose  help  he  meant  to  buy  with  a 
bribe.  It  was  the  sight  of  a  dainty  wisp  of 
smoke  from  the  wood  fire  curling  upward 
through  the  cloudy,  damp  air  that  had  brought 
him  limping  cautiously  across  the  right-of-way, 
to  climb  the  rocky  shelf  along  the  cut;  but  now 
he  hesitated,  shielded  in  the  shadows  twenty 
yards  away.  It  was  a  whiff  of  something 
savory  in  the  washboiler,  borne  to  him  on  the 
still  air  and  almost  making  him  cry  out  with 
eagerness,  that  drew  him  forth  finally.  At 
[41] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

the  sound  of  the  halting  footsteps  the  tramp 
stopped  stirring  the  mess  in  the  washboiler 
and  glanced  up  apprehensively.  As  he  took  in 
the  figure  of  the  newcomer  his  eyes  narrowed 
and  his  pasty,  nasty  face  spread  in  a  grin  of 
comprehension. 

"Well,  well,  well,"  he  said,  leering  offen 
sively,  "welcome  to  our  city,  little  stranger." 

Mr.  Trimm  came  nearer,  dragging  his  feet, 
for  they  were  almost  out  of  the  wrecks  of  his 
patent-leather  shoes.  His  gaze  shifted  from 
the  tramp's  face  to  the  stuff  on  the  fire,  his 
nostrils  wrinkling.  Then  slowly:  "I'm  in 
trouble,"  he  said,  and  held  out  his  hands. 

"Wot  I'd  call  a  mild  way  o'  puttin'  it," 
said  the  tramp  coolly.  "That  purticular  kind 
o'  joolry  ain't  gen'lly  wore  for  pleasure." 

His  eyes  took  on  a  nervous  squint  and  roved 
past  Mr.  Trimm's  stooped  figure  down  the 
slope  of  the  hillock. 

"Say,  pal,  how  fur  ahead  are  you  of  yore 
keeper?"  he  demanded,  his  manner  changing. 

"There  is  no  one  after  me  —  no  one  that 
I  know  of,"  explained  Mr.  Trimm.  "I  am 
quite  alone  —  I  am  certain  of  it." 

"Sure  there  ain't  nobody  lookin'  fur  you?" 
the  other  persisted  suspiciously. 

"I  tell  you  I  am  all  alone,"  protested  Mr. 
Trimm.  "I  want  your  help  in  getting  these 
—  these  things  off  and  sending  a  message  to  a 
friend.  You'll  be  well  paid,  very  well  paid. 
I  can  pay  you  more  money  than  you  ever 

[4«T 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

had  in  your  life,  probably,  for  your  help. 
I  can  promise " 

He  broke  off,  for  the  tramp,  as  if  reassured 
by  his  words,  had  stooped  again  to  his  cooking 
and  was  stirring  the  bubbling  contents  of  the 
washboiler  with  a  peeled  stick.  The  smell  of 
the  stew,  rising  strongly,  filled  Mr.  Trimm  with 
such  a  sharp  and  an  aching  hunger  that  he 
could  not  speak  for  a  moment.  He  mastered 
himself,  but  the  effort  left  him  shaking  and 
gulping. 

"Go  on,  then,  an'  tell  us  somethin'  about 
yourself,"  said  the  freckled  man.  "Wot  brings 
you  roamin'  round  this  here  railroad  cut  with 
them  bracelets  on?" 

"I  was  in  the  wreck,"  obeyed  Mr.  Trimm. 
"The  man  with  me  —  the  officer —  was  killed. 
I  wasn't  hurt  and  I  got  away  into  these  woods. 
But  they  think  I'm  dead  too  —  my  name  was 
among  the  list  of  dead." 

The  other's  peaky  face  lengthened  in  aston 
ishment. 

"Why,  say,"  he  began,  "I  read  all  about 
that  there  wreck  —  seen  the  list  myself  —  say, 
you  can't  be  Trimm,  the  New  York  banker? 
Yes,  you  are!  Wot  a  streak  of  luck!  Lemme 
look  at  you!  Trimm,  the  swell  financeer, 
sportin'  'round  with  the  darbies  on  him  all 
nice  an'  snug  an'  reg'lar!  Mister  Trimm  — 
well,  if  this  ain't  rich!" 

"My  name  is   Trimm,"  said  the  starving 

banker     miserably.     "I've     been     wandering 

[43]  ~~ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

about  here  a  great  many  hours  —  several  days, 
I  think  it  must  be  —  and  I  need  rest  and  food 
very  much  indeed.  I  don't  —  don't  feel  very 
well,"  he  added,  his  voice  trailing  off. 

At  this  his  self-control  gave  way  again  and 
he  began  to  quake  violently  as  if  with  an  ague. 
The  smell  of  the  cooking  overcame  him. 

"You  don't  look  so  well  an'  that's  a  fact, 
Trimm,"  sneered  the  tramp,  resuming  his 
malicious,  mocking  air.  "But  set  down  an* 
make  yourself  at  home,  an'  after  a  while,  when 
this  is  done,  we'll  have  a  bite  together  —  you 
an'  me.  It'll  be  a  reg'lar  tea  party  fur  jest  us 
two."  **t 

He  broke  off  to  chuckle.  His  mirth  made 
him  appear  even  more  repulsive  than  before. 

"But  looky  here,  you  wus  sayin'  somethin* 
about  money,"  he  said  suddenly.  "Le's  take 
a  look  at  all  this  here  money." 

He  came  over  to  him  and  went  through  Mr. 
Trimm's  pockets.  Mr.  Trimm  said  nothing 
and  stood  quietly,  making  no"  resistance.  The 
tramp  finished  a  workmanlike  search  of  the 
banker's  pockets.  He  looked  at  the  result  as 
it  lay  in  his  grimy  palm  —  a  moist  little  wad 
of  bills  and  some  chicken-feed  change  —  and 
spat  disgustedly  with  a  nasty  oath. 

"Well,  Trimm,"  he  said,  "fur  a  Wall  Street 
guy  seems  to  me  you  travel  purty  light.  About 
how  much  did  you  think  you'd  get  done  fur 
all  this  pile  of  wealth?" 

"You  will  be  well  paid,"  said  Mr.  Trimm, 
_ 


THE     ESCAPE.   OF     MR.     TRIMM 

arguing  hard;  "my  friend  will  see  to  that. 
What  I  want  you  to  do  is  to  take  the  money 
you  have  there  in  your  hand  and  buy  a  cold 
chisel  or  a  file  —  any  tools  that  will  cut  these 
things  off  me.  And  then  you  will  send  a  tele 
gram  to  a  certain  gentleman  in  New  York. 
And  let  me  stay  with  you  until  we  get  an 
answer  —  until  he  comes  here.  He  will  pay 
you  well;  I  promise  it." 

He  halted,  his  eyes  and  his  mind  again  on  the 
bubbling  stuff  in  the  rusted  washboiler.  The 
freckled  vagrant  studied  him  through  his  red- 
lidded  eyes,  kicking  some  loose  embers  back 
into  the  fire  with  his  toe. 

"I've  heard  a  lot  about  you  one  way  an' 
another,  Trimm,"  he  said.  "'Tain't  as  if  you 
wuz  some  pore  down-an'-out  devil  tryin*  to 
beat  the  cops  out  of  doin'  his  bit  in  stir.  You're 
the  way-up,  high-an'-mighty  kind  of  crook. 
An'  from  wot  I've  read  an'  heard  about  you 
you  never  toted  fair  with  nobody  yet.  There 
wuz  that  young  feller,  wot's  his  name?  —  the 
cashier  —  him  that  wuz  tried  with  you.  He 
went  along  with  you  in  yore  games  an*  done 
yore  work  fur  you  an*  you  let  him  go  over  the 
road  to  the  same  place  you're  tryin'  to  dodge 
now.  Besides,"  he  added  cunningly,  "you 
come  here  talkin*  mighty  big  about  money, 
yet  I  notice  you  ain't  carryin'  much  of  it  in 
yore  clothes.  All  I've  had  to  go  by  is  yore 
word.  An*  yore  word  ain't  worth  much,  by 
all  accounts." 

[45] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

"I  tell  you,  man,  that  you'll  profit  richly," 
burst  out  Mr.  Trimm,  the  words  falling  over 
each  other  in  his  new  panic.  "You  must  help 
me;  I've  endured  too  much  —  I've  gone 
through  too  much  to  give  up  now."  He 
pleaded  fast,  his  hands  shaking  in  a  quiver  of 
fear  and  eagerness  as  he  stretched  them  out 
in  entreaty  and  his  linked  chain  shaking  with 
them.  Promises,  pledges,  commands,  orders, 
arguments  poured  from  him.  His  tormentor 
checked  him  with  a  gesture. 

"You're  wot  I'd  call  a  bird  in  the  hand," 
he  chuckled,  hugging  his  slack  frame,  "an' 
it  ain't  fur  you  to  be  givin'  orders  —  it's  fur 
me.  An',  anyway,  I  guess  we  ain't  a-goin' 
to  be  able  to  make  a  trade  —  leastwise  not  on 
yore  terms.  But  we'll  do  business  all  right,  all 
right  —  anyhow,  I  will." 

"What  do  you  mean?"  panted  Mr.  Trimm, 
full  of  terror.  "You'll  help  me?" 

"I  mean  this,"  said  the  tramp  slowly.  He 
put  his  hands  under  his  loose-hanging  over 
coat  and  began  to  fumble  at  a  leather  strap 
about  his  waist.  "If  I  turn  you  over  to  the 
Government  I  know  wot  you'll  be  worth, 
purty  near,  by  guessin'  at  the  reward;  an' 
besides,  it'll  maybe  help  to  square  me  up  fur 
one  or  two  little  matters.  If  I  turn  you  loose 
I  ain't  got  nothin'  only  your  word  —  an' 
I've  got  an  idea  how  much  faith  I  kin  put  in 
that." 

Mr.  Trimm  glanced  about  him  wildly.     There 
__ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

was  no  escape.  He  was  fast  in  a  trap  which 
he  himself  had  sprung.  The  thought  of  being 
led  to  jail,  all  foul  of  body  and  fettered  as 
he  was,  by  this  filthy,  smirking  wretch  made 
him  crazy.  He  stumbled  backward  with  some 
insane  idea  of  running  away. 

"No  hurry,  no  hurry  a-tall,"  gloated  the 
tramp,  enjoying  the  torture  of  this  helpless 
captive  who  had  walked  into  his  hands.  "I 
ain't  goin'  to  hurt  you  none  —  only  make  sure 
that  you  don't  wander  off  an'  hurt  yourself 
while  I'm  gone.  Won't  do  to  let  you  be 
damagin'  yoreself;  you're  valuable  property. 
Trimm,  now,  I'll  tell  you  wot  we'll  do!  We'll 
just  back  you  up  agin  one  of  these  trees  an' 
then  we'll  jest  slip  this  here  belt  through 
yore  elbows  an'  buckle  it  around  behind  at 
the  back;  an'  I  kinder  guess  you'll  stay  right 
there  till  I  go  down  yonder  to  that  station 
that  I  passed  comin'  up  here  an'  see  wot  kind 
of  a  bargain  I  kin  strike  up  with  the  marshal. 
Come  on,  now,"  he  threatened  with  a  show  of 
bluster,  reading  the  resolution  that  was  mount 
ing  in  Mr.  Trimm's  face.  "  Come  on  peaceable, 
if  you  don't  want  to  git  hurt." 

Of  a  sudden  Mr.  Trimm  became  the  primi 
tive  man.  He  was  filled  with  those  elemental 
emotions  that  make  a  man  see  in  spatters  of 
crimson.  Gathering  strength  from  passion  out 
of  an  exhausted  frame,  he  sprang  forward  at 
the  tramp.  He  struck  at  him  with  his  head, 

his  shoulders,  his  knees,  his  manacled  wrists, 

_  _ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

all  at  once.  Not  really  hurt  by  the  puny 
assault,  but  caught  by  surprise,  the  freckled 
man  staggered  back,  clawing  at  the  air,  tripped 
on  the  washboiler  in  the  fire,  and  with  a  yell 
vanished  below  the  smooth  edge  of  the  cut. 

Mr.  Trimm  stole  forward  and  looked  over 
the  bluff.  Half-way  down  the  cliff  on  an  out 
cropping  shelf  of  rock  the  man  lay,  face  down 
ward,  motionless.  He  seemed  to  have  grown 
smaller  and  to  have  shrunk  into  his  clothes. 
One  long,  thin  leg  was  bent  up  under  the  skirts 
of  the  overcoat  in  a  queer,  twisted  way,  and 
the  cloth  of  the  trouser  leg  looked  flattened 
and  empty.  As  Mr.  Trimm  peered  down  at 
him  he  saw  a  red  stain  spreading  on  the  rock 
under  the  still,  silent  figure's  head. 

Mr.  Trimm  turned  to  the  washboiler.  It 
lay  on  its  side,  empty,  the  last  of  its  recent 
contents  sputtering  out  into  the  half-drowned 
fire.  He  stared  at  this  ruin  a  minute.  Then 
without  another  look  over  the  cliff  edge  he 
stumbled  slowly  down  the  hill,  muttering  to 
himself  as  he  went.  Just  as  he  struck  the  level 
it  began  to  rain,  gently  at  first,  then  hard, 
and  despite  the  shelter  of  the  full-leaved  forest 
trees,  he  was  soon  wet  through  to  his  skin 
and  dripped  water  as  he  lurched  along  without 
sense  of  direction  or,  indeed,  without  any 
active  realization  of  what  he  was  doing. 

Late  that  night  it  was  still  raining  —  a  cold, 
steady,  autumnal  downpour.  A  huddled  figure 

__ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

slowly  climbed  upon  a  low  fence  running  about 
the  house-yard  of  the  little  farm  where  the  boy 
lived  who  got  thrashed  for  losing  a  milkpail. 
On  the  wet  top  rail,  precariously  perching,  the 
figure  slipped  and  sprawled  forward  in  the 
miry  yard.  It  got  up,  painfully  swaying  on 
its  feet.  It  was  Mr.  Trimm,  looking  for  food. 
He  moved  slowly  toward  the  house,  tottering 
with  weakness  and  because  of  the  slick  mud 
underfoot;  peering  near-sightedly  this  way  and 
that  through  the  murk;  starting  at  every  sound 
and  stopping  often  to  listen. 

The  outlines  of  a  lean-to  kitchen  at  the  back 
of  the  house  were  looming  dead  ahead  of  him 
when  from  the  corner  of  the  cottage  sprang  a 
small  terrier.  It  made  for  Mr.  Trimm,  bark 
ing  shrilly.  He  retreated  backward,  kicking 
at  the  little  dog  and,  to  hold  his  balance,  strik 
ing  out  with  short,  dabby  jerks  of  his  fettered 
hands  —  they  were  such  motions  as  the  terrier 
itself  might  make  trying  to  walk  on  its  hind- 
legs.  Still  backing  away,  expecting  every 
instant  to  feel  the  terrier's  teeth  in  his  flesh, 
Mr.  Trimm  put  one  foot  into  a  hotbed  with 
a  great  clatter  of  the  breaking  glass.  He  felt 
the  sharp  ends  of  shattered  glass  tearing  and 
cutting  his  shin  as  he  jerked  free.  Recov 
ering  himself,  he  dealt  the  terrier  a  lucky 
kick  under  the  throat  that  sent  it  back,  yowl 
ing,  to  where  it  had  come  from,  and  then,  as 
a  door  jerked  open  and  a  half -dressed  man 
jumped  out  into  the  darkness,  Mr.  Trimm 

~ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

half  hobbled,  half  fell  out  of  sight  behind  the 
woodpile. 

Back  and  forth  along  the  lower  edge  of  his 
yard  the  farmer  hunted,  with  the  whimpering, 
cowed  terrier  to  guide  him,  poking  in  dark 
corners  with  the  muzzle  of  his  shotgun  for  the 
unseen  intruder  whose  coming  had  aroused 
the  household.  In  a  brushpile  just  over  the 
fence  to  the  east  Mr.  Trimm  lay  on  his  face 
upon  the  wet  earth,  with  the  rain  beating  down 
on  him,  sobbing  with  choking  gulps  that 
wrenched  him  cruelly,  biting  at  the  bonds  on 
his  wrists  until  the  sound  of  breaking  teeth 
gritted  in  the  air.  Finally,  in  the  hopeless, 
helpless  frenzy  of  his  agony  he  beat  his  arms  up 
and  down  until  the  bracelets  struck  squarely 
on  a  flat  stone  and  the  force  of  the  blow  sent 
the  cuffs  home  to  the  last  notch  so  that  they 
pressed  harder  and  faster  than  ever  upon  the 
tortured  wrist  bones. 

When  he  had  wasted  ten  or  fifteen  minutes 
in  a  vain  search  the  farmer  went  shivering  back 
indoors  to  dry  out  his  wet  shirt.  But  the 
groveling  figure  in  the  brushpile  lay  for  a  long 
time  where  it  was,  only  stirring  a  little  while 
the  rain  dripped  steadily  down  on  everything. 

The  wreck  was  on  a  Tuesday  evening.  Early 
on  the  Saturday  morning  following  the  chief 
of  police,  who  was  likewise  the  whole  of  the  day 
police  force  in  the  town  of  Westfield,  nine  miles 
from  the  place  where  the  collision  occurred, 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

heard  a  peculiar,  strangely  weak  knocking  at 
the  front  door  of  his  cottage,  where  he  also  had 
his  office.  The  door  was  a  Dutch  door,  sawed 
through  the  middle,  so  that  the  top  half  might 
be  opened  independently,  leaving  the  lower 
panel  fast.  He  swung  this  top  half  back. 

A  face  was  framed  in  the  opening  —  an 
indescribably  dirty,  unutterably  weary  face, 
with  matted  white  hair  and  a  rime  of  whitish 
beard  stubble  on  the  jaws.  It  was  fallen  in 
and  sunken  and  it  drooped  on  the  chest  of  its 
owner.  The  mouth,  swollen  and  pulpy,  as  if 
from  repeated  hard  blows,  hung  agape,  and 
between  the  purplish  parted  lips  showed  the 
stumps  of  broken  teeth.  The  eyes  blinked 
weakly  at  the  chief  from  under  lids  as  colorless 
as  the  eyelids  of  a  corpse.  The  bare  white 
head  was  filthy  with  plastered  mud  and  twigs, 
and  dripping  wet. 

"Hello,  there!"  said  the  chief,  startled  at 
this  apparition.  "What  do  you  want?" 

With  a  movement  that  told  of  straining 
effort  the  lolled  head  came  up  off  the  chest. 
The  thin,  corded  neck  stiffened  back,  rising 
frqm  a  dirty,  collarless  neckband.  The  Adam's 
apple  bulged  out  prominently,  as  big  as  a 
pigeon's  egg. 

"I  have  come,"  said  the  specter  in  a  wheezing 
rasp  of  a  voice  which  the  chief  could  hardly 
hear  —  "I  have  come  to  surrender  myself.  I 
am  Hobart  W.  Trimm." 

"I   guess   you   got   another   think   comin'," 

_ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

said  the  chief,  who  was  by  way  of  being  a 
neighborhood  wag.  "When  last  seen  Hobart 
W.  Trimm  was  only  fifty-two  years  old.  Be 
sides  which,  he's  dead  and  buried.  I  guess 
maybe  you'd  better  think  agin,  grandpap,  and 
see  if  you  ain't  Methus'lah  or  the  Wanderin* 
Jew." 

"I  am  Hobart  W.  Trimm,  the  banker," 
whispered  the  stranger  with  a  sort  of  wan 
stubbornness. 

"Go  on  and  prove  it,"  suggested  the  chief, 
more  than  willing  to  prolong  the  enjoyment  of 
the  sensation.  It  wasn't  often  in  Westfield 
that  wandering  lunatics  came  a-calling. 

"Got  any  way  to  prove  it?"  he  repeated  as 
the  visitor  stared  at  him. 

"Yes,"  came  the  creaking,  rusted  hinge  of 
a  voice,  "I  have." 

Slowly,  with  struggling  attempts,  he  raised 
his  hands  into  the  chief's  sight.  They  were 
horribly  swollen  hands,  red  with  the  dried  blood 
where  they  were  not  black  with  the  dried  dirt; 
the  fingers  puffed  up  out  of  shape;  the  nails 
broken;  they  were  like  the  skinned  paws  of  a 
bear.  And  at  the  wrists,  almost  buried  in  the 
bloated  folds  of  flesh,  blackened,  rusted,  bat 
tered,  yet  still  strong  and  whole,  was  a  tightly- 
locked  pair  of  Bean's  Latest  Model  Little  Giant 
handcuffs. 

"Great  God!"  cried  the  chief,  transfixed  at 
the  sight.  He  drew  the  bolt  and  jerked  open 
the  lower  half  of  the  door. 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

"Come  in,"  he  said,  "and  lemme  get  them 
irons  off  of  you  —  they  must  hurt  something 
terrible." 

"They  can  wait,"  said  Mr.  Trimm  very 
feebly,  very  slowly  and  very  humbly.  "I 
have  worn  them  a  long,  long  while  —  I  am 
used  to  them.  Wouldn't  you  please  get  me 
some  food  first?" 


[53 


II 

THE    BELLED    BUZZARD 


THERE  was  a  swamp  known  as  Little 
Niggerwool,  to  distinguish  it  from  Big 
Nigger  wool,  which  lay  across  the  river. 
It  was  traversable  only  by  those  who 
knew  it  well  —  an  oblong  stretch  of  tawny 
mud  and  tawny  water,  measuring  maybe  four 
miles  its  longest  way  and  two  miles  roughly 
at  its  widest;  and  it  was  full  of  cypress  and 
stunted  swamp  oak,  with  edgings  of  canebrake 
and  rank  weeds;  and  in  one  place,  where  a 
ridge  crossed  it  from  side  to  side,  it  was  snag- 
gled  like  an  old  jaw  with  dead  tree  trunks, 
rising  close-ranked  and  thick  as  teeth.  It 
was  untenanted  of  living  things  —  except, 
down  below,  there  were  snakes  and  mosqui 
toes,  and  a  few  wading  and  swimming  fowl; 
and  up  above,  those  big  woodpeckers  that  the 
country  people  called  logcocks  —  larger  than 
pigeons,  with  flaming  crests  and  spiky  tails  — 
swooping  in  their  long,  loping  flight  from  snag 

to  snag,   always  just  out  of  gunshot  of  the 
__ 


THE     BELLED     BUZZARD 

chance  invader,  and  uttering  a  strident  cry 
which  matched  those  surroundings  so  fitly 
that  it  might  well  have  been  the  voice  of  the 
swamp  itself. 

On  one  side  Little  Niggerwool  drained  its 
saffron  waters  off  into  a  sluggish  creek,  where 
summer  ducks  bred,  and  on  the  other  it  ended 
abruptly  at  a  natural  bank  of  high  ground, 
along  which  the  county  turnpike  ran.  The 
swamp  came  right  up  to  the  road  and  thrust 
its  fringe  of  reedy,  weedy  undergrowth  forward 
as  though  in  challenge  to  the  good  farm  lands 
that  were  spread  beyond  the  barrier.  At  the 
time  I  am  speaking  of  it  was  midsummer,  and 
from  these  canes  and  weeds  and  waterplants 
there  came  a  smell  so  rank  as  almost  to  be 
overpowering.  They  grew  thick  as  a  curtain, 
making  a  blank  green  wall  taller  than  a  man's 
head. 

Along  the  dusty  stretch  of  road  fronting  the 
swamp  nothing  living  had  stirred  for  half  an 
hour  or  more.  And  so  at  length  the  weed- 
stems  rustled  and  parted,  and  out  from  among 
them  a  man  came  forth  silently  and  cautiously. 
He  was  an  old  man  —  an  old  man  who  had 
once  been  fat,  but  with  age  had  grown  lean 
again,  so  that  now  his  skin  was  by  odds  too 
large  for  him.  It  lay  on  the  back  of  his  neck 
in  folds.  Under  the  chin  he  was  pouched  like 
a  pelican  and  about  the  jowls  was  wattled 
like  a  turkey  gobbler. 

He  came  out  upon  the  road  slowly  and 
[55] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

stopped  there,  switching  his  legs  absently 
with  the  stalk  of  a  horse  weed.  He  was  in  his 
shirtsleeves  —  a  respectable,  snuffy  old  figure; 
evidently  a  man  deliberate  in  words  and 
thoughts  and  actions.  There  was  something 
about  him  suggestive  of  an  old  staid  sheep 
that  had  been  engaged  in  a  clandestine  trans 
action  and  was  afraid  of  being  found  out. 

He  had  made  amply  sure  no  one  was  in  sight 
before  he  came  out  of  the  swamp,  but  now, 
to  be  doubly  certain,  he  watched  the  empty 
road  —  first  up,  then  down  —  for  a  long  half 
minute,  and  fetched  a  sighing  breath  of  satis 
faction.  His  eyes  fell  upon  his  feet,  and, 
taken  with  an  idea,  he  stepped  back  to  the  edge 
of  the  road  and  with  a  wisp  of  crabgrass  wiped 
his  shoes  clean  of  the  swamp  mud,  which  was 
of  a  different  color  and  texture  from  the  soil 
of  the  upland.  All  his  life  Squire  H.  B. 
Gathers  had  been  a  careful,  canny  man,  and 
he  had  need  to  be  doubly  careful  on  this  summer 
morning.  Having  disposed  of  the  mud  on  his 
feet,  he  settled  his  white  straw  hat  down 
firmly  upon  his  head,  and,  crossing  the  road, 
he  climbed  a  stake-and-rider  fence  laboriously 
and  went  plodding  sedately  across  a  weedfield 
and  up  a  slight  slope  toward  his  house,  half  a 
mile  away,  upon  the  crest  of  the  little  hill. 

He  felt  perfectly  natural  —  not  like  a  man 
who  had  just  taken  a  fellowman's  life  —  but 
natural  and  safe,  and  well  satisfied  with  him- 

self  and  with  his  morning's  work.     And  he  was 

_      —  _ 


THE     BELLED     BUZZARD 

safe;  that  was  the  main  thing  —  absolutely 
safe.  Without  hitch  or  hindrance  he  had  done 
the  thing  for  which  he  had  been  planning  and 
waiting  and  longing  all  these  months.  There 
had  been  no  slip  or  mischance;  the  whole 
thing  had  worked  out  as  plainly  and  simply 
as  two  and  two  make  four.  No  living  creature 
except  himself  knew  of  the  meeting  in  the 
early  morning  at  the  head  of  Little  Niggerwool, 
exactly  where  the  squire  had  figured  they 
should  meet;  none  knew  of  the  device  by  which 
the  other  man  had  been  lured  deeper  and 
deeper  in  the  swamp  to  the  exact  spot  where 
the  gun  was  hidden.  No  one  had  seen  the  two 
of  them  enter  the  swamp;  no  one  had  seen 
the  squire  emerge,  three  hours  later,  alone. 

The  gun,  having  served  its  purpose,  was  hid 
den  again,  in  a  place  no  mortal  eye  would 
ever  discover.  Face  downward,  with  a  hole 
between  his  shoulderblades,  the  dead  man  was 
lying  where  he  might  lie  undiscovered  for 
months  or  for  years,  or  forever.  His  pedler's 
pack  was  buried  in  the  mud  so  deep  that  not 
even  the  probing  crawfishes  could  find  it. 
He  would  never  be  missed  probably.  There 
was  but  the  slightest  likelihood  that  inquiry 
would  ever  be  made  for  him  —  let  alone  a 
search.  He  was  a  stranger  and  a  foreigner, 
the  dead  man  was,  whose  comings  and  goings 
made  no  great  stir  in  the  neighborhood,  and 
whose  failure  to  come  again  would  be  taken  as 
a  matter  of  course  —  just  one  of  those  shift- 
[57] _ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

less,  wandering  Dagoes,  here  today  and  gone 
tomorrow.  That  was  one  of  the  best  things 
about  it  —  these  Dagoes  never  had  any  people 
in  this  country  to  worry  about  them  or  look 
for  them  when  they  disappeared.  And  so  it 
was  all  over  and  done  with,  and  nobody  the 
wiser.  The  squire  clapped  his  hands  together 
briskly  with  the  air  of  a  man  dismissing  a 
subject  from  his  mind  for  good,  and  mended 
his  gait. 

He  felt  no  stabbings  of  conscience.  On 
the  contrary,  a  glow  of  gratification  filled  him. 
His  house  was  saved  from  scandal;  his  present 
wife  would  philander  no  more  —  before  his 
very  eyes  —  with  these  young  Dagoes,  who 
came  from  nobody  knew  where,  with  packs  on 
their  backs  and  persuasive,  wheedling  tongues 
in  their  heads.  At  this  thought  the  squire 
raised  his  head  and  considered  his  homestead. 
It  looked  good  to  him  —  the  small  white 
cottage  among  the  honey  locusts,  with  beehives 
and  flower  beds  about  it;  the  tidy  whitewashed 
fence;  the  sound  outbuildings  at  the  back, 
and  the  well-tilled  acres  roundabout. 

At  the  fence  he  halted  and  turned  about, 
carelessly  and  casually,  and  looked  back  along 
the  way  he  had  come.  Everything  was  as 
it  should  be  —  the  weedfield  steaming  in  the 
heat;  the  empty  road  stretching  along  the 
crooked  ridge  like  a  long  gray  snake  sunning 
itself;  and  beyond  it,  massing  up,  the  dark, 

cloaking  stretch  of  swamp.     Everything  was 

-_ __ 


THE     BELLED     BUZZARD 

all  right,  but The  squire's  eyes,  in  their 

loose  sacs  of  skin,  narrowed  and  squinted. 
Out  of  the  blue  arch  away  over  yonder  a  small 
black  dot  had  resolved  itself  and  was  swinging 
to  and  fro,  like  a  mote.  A  buzzard  —  hey? 
Well,  there  were  always  buzzards  about  on  a 
clear  day  like  this.  Buzzards  were  nothing 
to  worry  about  —  almost  any  time  you  could 
see  one  buzzard,  or  a  dozen  buzzards  if  you 
were  a  mind  to  look  for  them. 

But  this  particular  buzzard  now  —  wasn't 
he  making  for  Little  Niggerwool?  The  squire 
did  not  like  the  idea  of  that.  He  had  not 
thought  of  the  buzzards  until  this  minute. 
Sometimes  when  cattle  strayed  the  owners 
had  been  known  to  follow  the  buzzards,  know 
ing  mighty  well  that  if  the  buzzards  led  the 
way  to  where  the  stray  was,  the  stray  would 
be  past  the  small  salvage  of  hide  and  hoofs  — 
but  the  owner's  doubts  would  be  set  at  rest 
for  good  and  all. 

There  was  a  grain  of  disquiet  in  this.  The 
squire  shook  his  head  to  drive  the  thought 
away  —  yet  it  persisted,  coming  back  like  a 
midge  dancing  before  his  face.  Once  at  home, 
however,  Squire  Gathers  deported  himself  in  a 
perfectly  normal  manner.  With  the  satisfied 
proprietorial  eye  of  an  elderly  husband  who 
has  no  rivals,  he  considered  his  young  wife, 
busied  about  her  household  duties.  He  sat 
in  an  easy-chair  upon  his  front  gallery  and  read 

his  yesterday's  Courier-Journal  which  the  rural 

—  - 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

carrier  had  brought  him;  but  he  kept  stepping 
out  into  the  yard  to  peer  up  into  the  sky  and 
all  about  him.  To  the  second  Mrs.  Gathers 
he  explained  that  he  was  looking  for  weather 
signs.  A  day  as  hot  and  still  as  this  one  was  a 
regular  weather  breeder;  there  ought  to  be 
rain  before  night. 

"Maybe  so,"  she  said;  "but  locking's  not 
going  to  bring  rain." 

Nevertheless  the  squire  continued  to  look. 
There  was  really  nothing  to  worry  about;  still 
at  midday  he  did  not  eat  much  dinner,  and 
before  his  wife  was  half  through  with  hers  he 
was  back  on  the  gallery.  His  paper  was  cast 
aside  and  he  was  watching.  The  original 
buzzard  —  or,  anyhow,  he  judged  it  was  the 
first  one  he  had  seen  —  was  swinging  back  and 
forth  in  great  pendulum  swings,  but  closer 
down  toward  the  swamp  —  closer  and  closer  — 
until  it  looked  from  that  distance  as  though 
the  buzzard  flew  almost  at  the  level  of  the 
tallest  snags  there.  And  on  beyond  this  first 
buzzard,  coursing  above  him,  were  other  buz 
zards.  Were  there  four  of  them?  No;  there 
were  five  —  five  in  all. 

Such  is  the  way  of  the  buzzard  —  that 
shifting  black  question  mark  which  punctuates 
a  Southern  sky.  In  the  woods  a  shoat  or  a 
sheep  or  a  horse  lies  down  to  die.  At  once, 
coming  seemingly  out  of  nowhere,  appears  a 
black  spot,  up  five  hundred  feet  or  a  thousand 
in  the  air.  In  broad  loops  and  swirls  this  dot 

___ 


THE     BELLED     BUZZARD 

swings  round  and  round  and  round,  coming  a 
little  closer  to  earth  at  every  turn  and  always 
with  one  particular  spot  upon  the  earth  for 
the  axis  of  its  wheel.  Out  of  space  also  other 
moving  spots  emerge  and  grow  larger  as  they 
tack  and  jibe  and  drop  nearer,  coming  in  their 
leisurely  buzzard  way  to  the  feast.  There 
is  no  haste  —  the  feast  will  wait.  If  it  is  a 
dumb  creature  that  has  fallen  stricken  the 
grim  coursers  will  sooner  or  later  be  assembled 
about  it  and  alongside  it,  scrouging  ever  closer 
and  closer  to  the  dying  thing,  with  awkward 
out-thrustings  of  their  naked  necks  and  great 
dust-raising  flaps  of  the  huge,  unkempt  wings; 
lifting  their  feathered  shanks  high  and  stiffly 
like  old  crippled  grave-diggers  in  overalls  that 
are  too  tight  —  but  silent  and  patient  all, 
offering  no  attack  until  the  last  tremor  runs 
through  the  stiffening  carcass  and  the  eyes 
glaze  over.  To  humans  the  buzzard  pays  a 
deeper  meed  of  respect  —  he  hangs  aloft  longer; 
but  in  the  end  he  comes.  No  scavenger  shark, 
no  carrion  crab,  ever  chambered  more  grisly 
secrets  in  his  digestive  processes  than  this 
big  charnel  bird.  Such  is  the  way  of  the 
buzzard. 

*  •  •  *  •  *  •  «  •  • 

The  squire  missed  his  afternoon  nap,  a  thing 
that  had  not  happened  in  years.  He  stayed 
on  the  front  gallery  and  kept  count.  Those 
moving  distant  black  specks  typified  uneasi 
ness  for  the  squire  —  not  fear  exactly,  or  panic 

___ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

or  anything  akin  to  it,  but  a  nibbling,  nagging 
kind  of  uneasiness.  Time  and  again  he  said 
to  himself  that  he  would  not  think  about  them 
any  more;  but  he  did  —  unceasingly. 

By  supper  time  there  were  seven  of  them. 

He  slept  light  and  slept  badly.  It  was  not 
the  thought  of  that  dead  man  lying  yonder 
in  Little  Niggerwool  that  made  him  toss 
and  fume  while  his  wife  snored  gently  along 
side  him.  It  was  something  else  altogether. 
Finally  his  stirrings  roused  her  and  she  asked 
him  drowsily  what  ailed  him.  Was  he  sick? 
Or  bothered  about  anything? 

Irritated,  he  answered  her  snappishly.  Cer 
tainly  nothing  was  bothering  him,  he  told  her. 
It  was  a  hot  enough  night  —  wasn't  it?  And 
when  a  man  got  a  little  along  in  life  he  was  apt 
to  be  a  light  sleeper  —  wasn't  that  so?  Well, 
then?  She  turned  upon  her  side  and  slept 
again  with  her  light,  purring  snore.  The 
squire  lay  awake,  thinking  hard  and  waiting 
for  day  to  come. 

At  the  first  faint  pink-and-gray  glow  he  was 
up  and  out  upon  the  gallery.  He  cut  a  comic 
figure  standing  there  in  his  shirt  in  the  half 
light,  with  the  dewlap  at  his  throat  dangling 
grotesquely  in  the  neck  opening  of  the  un 
buttoned  garment,  and  his  bare  bowed  legs 
showing,  splotched  and  varicose.  He  kept 
his  eyes  fixed  on  the  skyline  below,  to  the  south. 
Buzzards  are  early  risers  too.  Presently,  as 

_ .         __ 


THE     BELLED     BUZZARD 

the  heavens  shimmered  with  the  miracle  of 
sunrise,  he  could  make  them  out  —  six  or 
seven,  or  maybe  eight. 

An  hour  after  breakfast  the  squire  was  on 
his  way  down  through  the  weedfield  to  the 
county  road.  He  went  half  eagerly,  half 
unwillingly.  He  wanted  to  make  sure  about 
those  buzzards.  It  might  be  that  they  were 
aiming  for  the  old  pasture  at  the  head  of  the 
swamp.  There  were  sheep  grazing  there  —  and 
it  might  be  that  a  sheep  had  died.  Buzzards 
were  notoriously  fond  of  sheep,  when  dead. 
Or,  if  they  were  pointed  for  the  swamp,  he 
must  satisfy  himself  exactly  what  part  of  the 
swamp  it  was.  He  was  at  the  stake-and-rider 
fence  when  a  mare  came  jogging  down  the  road, 
drawing  a  rig  with  a  man  in  it.  At  sight  of 
the  squire  in  the  field  the  man  pulled  up. 

"Hi,  squire!"  he  saluted.  "Goin'  some- 
wheres?" 

"No;  jest  knockin'  about,"  the  squire 
said  —  "jest  sorter  lookin'  the  place  over." 

"Hot  agin  —  ain't  it?"  said  the  other. 

The  squire  allowed  that  it  was,  for  a  fact, 
mighty  hot.  Commonplaces  of  gossip  followed 
this  —  county  politics  and  a  neighbor's  wife 
sick  of  breakbone  fever  down  the  road  a  piece. 
The  subject  of  crops  succeeded  inevitably. 
The  squire  spoke  of  the  need  of  rain.  Instantly 
he  regretted  it,  for  the  other  man,  who  was  by 
way  of  being  a  weather  wiseacre,  cocked  his  head 

aloft  to  study  the  sky  for  any  signs  of  clouds. 

_  „ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

"Wonder  whut  all  them  buzzards  are  doin' 
yonder,  squire,"  he  said,  pointing  upward  with 
his  whipstock. 

"Whut  buzzards  —  where?"  asked  the  squire 
with  an  elaborate  note  of  carelessness  in  his 
voice. 

"Right  yonder,  over  Little  Niggerwool  —  see 
'em  there?" 

"Oh,  yes,"  the  squire  made  answer.  "Now 
I  see  'em.  They  ain't  doin'  nothin',  I  reckin 

—  jest  flyin'  round  same  as  they  always  do  in 
clear  weather." 

"Must  be  somethin'  dead  over  there!" 
speculated  the  man  in  the  buggy. 

"A  hawg  probably,"  said  the  squire  promptly 

—  almost  too  promptly.     "There's   likely   to 
be  hawgs  usin'  in  Niggerwool.     Bristow,  over 
on  the  other  side  from  here  —  he's  got  a  big 
drove  of  hawgs." 

"Well,  mebbe  so,"  said  the  man;  "but 
hawgs  is  a  heap  more  apt  to  be  feedin'  on  high 
ground,  seems  like  to  me.  Well,  I'll  be  gittin' 
along  towards  town.  G'day,  squire."  And 
he  slapped  the  lines  down  on  the  mare's  flank 
and  jogged  off  through  the  dust. 

He  could  not  have  suspected  anything  — 
that  man  couldn't.  As  the  squire  turned  away 
from  the  road  and  headed  for  his  house  he 
congratulated  himself  upon  that  stroke  of  his 
in  bringing  in  Bristow's  hogs;  and  yet  there 
remained  this  disquieting  note  in  the  situation, 
that  buzzards  flying,  and  especially  buzzards 


THE     BELLED     BUZZARD 

flying  over  Little  Niggerwool,  made  people 
curious  —  made  them  ask  questions. 

He  was  half-way  across  the  weedfield  when, 
above  the  hum  of  insect  life,  above  the  inward 
clamor  of  his  own  busy  speculations,  there  came 
to  his  ear  dimly  and  distantly  a  sound  that 
made  him  halt  and  cant  his  head  to  one  side 
the  better  to  hear  it.  Somewhere,  a  good  way 
off,  there  was  a  thin,  thready,  broken  strain 
of  metallic  clinking  and  clanking  —  an  eery 
ghost-chime  ringing.  It  came  nearer  and  be 
came  plainer  —  tonk-tonk-tonk;  then  the  tonks 
all  running  together  briskly. 

A  sheep  bell  or  a  cowbell  —  that  was  it;  but 
why  did  it  seem  to  come  from  overhead,  from 
up  in  the  sky,  like?  And  why  did  it  shift  so 
abruptly  from  one  quarter  to  another  —  from 
left  to  right  and  back  again  to  left?  And  how 
was  it  that  the  clapper  seemed  to  strike  so  fast? 
Not  even  the  breachiest  of  breachy  young 
heifers  could  be  expected  to  tinkle  a  cowbell 
with  such  briskness.  The  squire's  eye  searched 
the  earth  and  the  sky,  his  troubled  mind  giving 
to  his  eye  a  quick  and  flashing  scrutiny.  He 
had  it.  It  was  not  a  cow  at  all.  It  was  not 
anything  that  went  on  four  legs. 

One  of  the  loathly  flock  had  left  the  others. 
The  orbit  of  his  swing  had  carried  him  across 
the  road  and  over  Squire  Gathers'  land.  He 
was  sailing  right  toward  and  over  the  squire 
now.  Craning  his  flabby  neck,  the  squire 
could  make  out  the  unwholesome  contour  of 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

the  huge  bird.  He  could  see  the  ragged  black 
wings  —  a  buzzard's  wings  are  so  often  ragged 
and  uneven  —  and  the  naked  throat;  the 
slim,  naked  head;  the  big  leet  folded  up  against 
the  dingy  belly.  And  he  could  see  a  bell  too 
—  an  under-sized  cowbell  —  that  dangled  at  the 
creature's  breast  and  jangled  incessantly.  All 
his  life  nearly  Squire  Gathers  had  been  hearing 
about  the  Belled  Buzzard.  Now  with  his  own 
eye  he  was  seeing  him. 

Once,  years  and  years  and  years  ago,  some 
one  trapped  a  buzzard,  and  before  freeing  it 
clamped  about  its  skinny  neck  a  copper  band 
with  a  cowbell  pendent  from  it.  Since  then 
the  bird  so  ornamented  has  been  seen  a  hundred 
times  —  and  heard  oftener  —  over  an  area 
as  wide  as  half  the  continent.  It  has  been 
reported,  now  in  Kentucky,  now  in  Texas, 
now  in  North  Carolina  —  now  anywhere  be 
tween  the  Ohio  River  and  the  Gulf.  Cross 
roads  correspondents  take  their  pens  in  hand 
to  write  to  the  country  papers  that  on  such 
and  such  a  date,  at  such  a  place,  So-and-So 
saw  the  Belled  Buzzard.  Always  it  is  the 
Belled  Buzzard,  never  a  belled  buzzard.  The 
Belled  Buzzard  is  an  institution. 

There  must  be  more  than  one  of  them.  It 
seems  hard  to  believe  that  one  bird,  even  a 
buzzard  in  his  prime,  and  protected  by  law  in 
every  Southern  state  and  known  to  be  a  bird 
of  great  age,  could  live  so  long  and  range  so 
far  and  wear  a  clinking  cowbell  all  the  time! 

__ 


THE     BELLED     BUZZARD 

Probably  other  jokers  have  emulated  the 
original  joker;  probably  if  the  truth  were 
known  there  have  been  a  dozen  such;  but  the 
country  people  will  have  it  that  there  is  only 
one  Belled  Buzzard  —  a  bird  that  bears  a 
charmed  life  and  on  his  neck  a  never  silent 
bell. 

Squire  Gathers  regarded  it  a  most  untoward 
thing  that  the  Belled  Buzzard  should  have 
come  just  at  this  time.  The  movements  of 
ordinary,  unmarked  buzzards  mainly  con 
cerned  only  those  whose  stock  had  strayed; 
but  almost  anybody  with  time  to  spare  might 
follow  this  rare  and  famous  visitor,  this  belled 
and  feathered  junkman  of  the  sky.  Supposing 
now  that  some  one  followed  it  today  —  maybe 
followed  it  even  to  a  certain  thick  clump  of 
cypress  in  the  middle  of  Little  Niggerwool! 

But  at  this  particular  moment  the  Belled 
Buzzard  was  heading  directly  away  from  that 
quarter.  Could  it  be  following  him?  Of 
course  not!  It  was  just  by  chance  that  it  flew 
along  the  course  the  squire  was  taking.  But, 
to  make  sure,  he  veered  off  sharply,  away  from 
the  footpath  into  the  high  weeds  so  that  the 
startled  grasshoppers  sprayed  up  in  front  of 
him  in  fan-like  flights. 

He  was  right;    it  was  only  a  chance.    The 

Belled   Buzzard   swung    off    too,   but  in   the 

opposite  direction,  with  a  sharp  tonking  of  its 

bell,  and,  flapping  hard,  was   in  a  minute  or 

[67] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

two  out  of  hearing  and  sight,  past  the  trees 
to  the  westward. 

Again  the  squire  skimped  his  dinner,  and 
again  he  spent  the  long  drowsy  afternoon 
upon  his  front  gallery.  In  all  the  sky  there 
were  now  no  buzzards  visible,  belled  or  unbelled 
—  they  had  settled  to  earth  somewhere;  and 
this  served  somewhat  to  soothe  the  squire's  pes 
tered  mind.  This  does  not  mean,  though,  that 
he  was  by  any  means  easy  in  his  thoughts. 
Outwardly  he  was  calm  enough,  with  the  rumi 
native  judicial  air  befitting  the  oldest  justice 
of  the  peace  in  the  county;  but,  within  him, 
a  little  something  gnawed  unceasingly  at  his 
nerves  like  one  of  those  small  white  worms  that 
are  to  be  found  in  seemingly  sound  nuts. 
About  once  in  so  long  a  tiny  spasm  of  the 
muscles  would  contract  the  dewlap  under  his 
chin.  The  squire  had  never  heard  of  that 
play,  made  famous  by  a  famous  player,  wherein 
the  murdered  victim  was  a  pedler  too,  and 
a  clamoring  bell  the  voice  of  unappeasable 
remorse  in  the  murderer's  ear.  As  a  strict 
churchgoer  the  squire  had  no  use  for  players  or 
for  play  actors,  and  so  was  spared  that  added 
canker  to  his  conscience.  It  was  bad  enough 
as  it  was. 

That  night,  as  on  the  night  before,  the  old 
man's  sleep  was  broken  and  fitful  and  dis 
turbed  by  dreaming,  in  which  he  heard  a  metal 
clapper  striking  against  a  brazen  surface. 
This  was  one  dream  that  came  true.  Just 


THE     BELLED     BUZZARD 

after  daybreak  he  heaved  himself  out  of  bed, 
with  a  flop  of  his  broad  bare  feet  upon  the  floor, 
and  stepped  to  the  window  and  peered  out. 
Half  seen  in  the  pinkish  light,  the  Belled  Buz 
zard  flapped  directly  over  his  roof  and  flew 
due  south,  right  toward  the  swamp  —  drawing 
a  direct  line  through  the  air  between  the  slayer 
and  the  victim  —  or,  anyway,  so  it  seemed  to 
the  watcher,  grown  suddenly  tremulous. 

Knee  deep  in  yellow  swamp  water  the  squire 
squatted,  with  his  shotgun  cocked  and  loaded 
and  ready,  waiting  to  kill  the  bird  that  now 
typified  for  him  guilt  and  danger  and  an  abid 
ing  great  fear.  Gnats  plagued  him  and  about 
him  frogs  croaked.  Almost  overhead  a  log- 
cock  clung  lengthwise  to  a  snag,  watching  him. 
Snake  doctors,  limber,  long  insects  with  bronze 
bodies  and  filmy  wings,  went  back  and  forth 
like  small  living  shuttles.  Other  buzzards 
passed  and  repassed,  but  the  squire  waited, 
forgetting  the  cramps  in  his  elderly  limbs  and 
the  discomfort  of  the  water  in  his  shoes. 

At  length  he  heard  the  bell.  It  came  nearer 
and  nearer,  and  the  Belled  Buzzard  swung 
overhead  not  sixty  feet  up,  its  black  bulk  a  fair 
target  against  the  blue.  He  aimed  and  fired, 
both  barrels  bellowing  at  once  and  a  fog  of 
thick  powder  smoke  enveloping  him.  Through 
the  smoke  he  saw  the  bird  careen  and  its  bell 
jangled  furiously;  then  the  buzzard  righted 

itself  and  was  gone,  fleeing  so  fast  that  the 
__ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

sound  of  its  bell  was  hushed  almost  instantly. 
Two  long  wing  feathers  drifted  slowly  down; 
torn  disks  of  gunwadding  and  shredded  green 
scraps  of  leaves  descended  about  the  squire  in 
a  little  shower. 

He  cast  his  empty  gun  from  him  so  that  it 
fell  in  the  water  and  disappeared;  and  he 
hurried  out  of  the  swamp  as  fast  as  his  shaky 
legs  would  take  him,  splashing  himself  with 
mire  and  water  to  his  eyebrows.  Mucked  with 
mud,  breathing  in  great  gulps,  trembling,  a 
suspicious  figure  to  any  eye,  he  burst  through 
the  weed  curtain  and  staggered  into  the  open, 
his  caution  all  gone  and  a  vast  desperation 
fairly  choking  him  —  but  the  gray  road  was 
empty  and  the  field  beyond  the  road  was 
empty;  and,  except  for  him,  the  whole  world 
seemed  empty  and  silent. 

As  he  crossed  the  field  Squire  Gathers  com 
posed  himself.  With  plucked  handfuls  of  grass 
he  cleansed  himself  of  much  of  the  swamp  mire 
that  coated  him  over;  but  the  little  white 
worm  that  gnawed  at  his  nerves  had  become  a 
cold  snake  that  was  coiled  about  his  heart, 
squeezing  it  tighter  and  tighter! 

This  episode  of  the  attempt  to  kill  the  Belled 
Buzzard  occurred  in  the  afternoon  of  the  third 
day.  In  the  forenoon  of  the  fourth,  the  weather 
being  still  hot,  with  cloudless  skies  and  no  air 
stirring,  there  was  a  rattle  of  warped  wheels 

in  the  squire's  lane  and  a  hail  at  his  yard  fence1 

__  . 


THE     BELLED     BUZZARD 

Coming  out  upon  his  gallery  from  the  innermost 
darkened  room  of  his  house,  where  he  had  been 
stretched  upon  a  bed,  the  squire  shaded  his 
eyes  from  the  glare  and  saw  the  constable  of 
his  own  magisterial  district  sitting  in  a  buggy 
at  the  gate  waiting. 

The  old  man  went  down  the  dirtpath  slowly, 
almost  reluctantly,  with  his  head  twisted  up 
sidewise,  listening,  watching;  but  the  con 
stable  sensed  nothing  strange  about  the  other's 
gait  and  posture;  the  constable  was  full  of 
the  news  he  brought.  He  began  to  unload  the 
burden  of  it  without  preamble. 

"Mornin',  Squire  Gathers.  There's  been  a 
dead  man  found  in  Little  Niggerwool  —  and 
you're  wanted." 

He  did  not  notice  that  the  squire  was  holding 
on  with  both  hands  to  the  gate;  but  he  did 
notice  that  the  squire  had  a  sick  look  out  of 
his  eyes  and  a  dead,  pasty  color  in  his  face; 
and  he  noticed  —  but  attached  no  meaning 
to  it  —  that  when  the  squire  spoke  his  voice 
seemed  flat  and  hollow. 

"Wanted  —  fur  —  whut?"  The  squire 
forced  the  words  out  of  his  throat,  pumped 
them  out  fairly. 

"Why,  to  hold  the  inquest,"  explained  the 
constable.  "The  coroner's  sick  abed,  and  he 
said  you  bein'  the  nearest  jestice  of  the  peace 
you  should  serve." 

"  Oh,"  said  the  squire  with  more  ease.  "  Well, 

where  is  it  —  the  body?" 

~  [rT]  ~ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

"They  taken  it  to  Bristow's  place  and  put 
it  in  his  stable  for  the  present.  They  brought 
it  out  over  on  that  side  and  his  place  was  the 
nearest.  If  you'll  hop  in  here  with  me,  squire, 
I'll  ride  you  right  over  there  now.  There's 
enough  men  already  gathered  to  make  up  a 
jury,  I  reckin," 

"I  —  I  ain't  well,"  demurred  the  squire. 
"I've  been  sleepin'  porely  these  last  few  nights. 
It's  the  heat,"  he  added  quickly. 

"Well,  suh,  you  don't  look  very  brash,  and 
that's  a  fact,"  said  the  constable;  "but  this 
here  job  ain't  goin'  to  keep  you  long.  You  see 
it's  in  such  shape  —  the  body  is  —  that  there 
ain't  no  way  of  makin'  out  who  the  feller 
was  nor  whut  killed  him.  There  ain't  nobody 
reported  missin'  in  this  county  as  we  know  of, 
either;  so  I  jedge  a  verdict  of  a  unknown 
person  dead  from  unknown  causes  would  be 
about  the  correct  thing.  And  we  kin  git  it  all 
over  mighty  quick  and  put  him  underground 
right  away,  suh  —  if  you'll  go  along  now." 

"I'll  go,"  agreed  the  squire,  almost  quivering 
in  his  newborn  eagerness.  "I'll  go  right  now." 
He  did  not  wait  to  get  his  coat  or  to  notify 
his  wife  of  the  errand  that  was  taking  him. 
In  his  shirtsleeves  he  climbed  into  the  buggy, 
and  the  constable  turned  his  horse  and  clucked 
him  into  a  trot.  And  now  the  squire  asked  the 
question  that  knocked  at  his  lips  demanding  to 
be  asked  —  the  question  the  answer  to  which 
he  yearned  for  and  yet  dreaded. 
[72] 


THE     BELLED     BUZZARD 

"How  did  they  come  to  find  —  it?" 

"Well,  suh,  that's  a  funny  thing,"  said 
the  constable.  "Early  this  mornin'  Bristow's 
oldest  boy  —  that  one  they  call  Buddy  —  he 
heared  a  cowbell  over  in  the  swamp  and  so  he 
went  to  look;  Bristow's  got  cows,  as  you  know, 
and  one  or  two  of  'em  is  belled.  And  he  kept 
on  followin'  after  the  sound  of  it  till  he  got  way 
down  into  the  thickest  part  of  them  cypress 
slashes  that's  near  the  middle  there;  and 
right  there  he  run  acrost  it  —  this  body. 

"But,  suh,  squire,  it  wasn't  no  cow  at  all. 
No,  suh;  it  was  a  buzzard  with  a  cowbell  on 
his  neck  —  that's  whut  it  was.  Yes,  suh; 
that  there  same  old  Belled  Buzzard  he's  come 
back  agin  and  is  hangin'  round.  They  tell 
me  he  ain't  been  seen  round  here  sence  the  year 
of  the  yellow  fever  —  I  don't  remember  myself, 
but  that's  whut  they  tell  me.  The  niggers 
over  on  the  other  side  are  right  smartly  worked 
up  over  it.  They  say  —  the  niggers  do  — 
that  when  the  Belled  Buzzard  comes  it's  a  sign 
of  bad  luck  for  somebody,  shore!" 

The  constable  drove  on,  talking  on,  garru 
lous  as  a  guinea  hen.  The  squire  didn't  heed 
him.  Hunched  back  in  the  buggy,  he  harkened 
only  to  those  busy  inner  voices  filling  his  mind 
with  thundering  portents.  Even  so,  his  ear 
was  first  to  catch  above  the  rattle  of  the 
buggy  wheels  the  far-away,  faint  tonk-tonk! 
They  were  about  half-way  to  Bristow's  place 
then.  He  gave  no  sign,  and  it  was  perhaps 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

half  a  minute  before  his  companion  heard 
it  top. 

The  constable  jerked  the  horse  to  a  stand 
still  and  craned  his  neck  over  his  shoulder. 

"Well,  by  doctors!"  he  cried,  "if  there  ain't 
the  old  scoundrel  now,  right  here  behind  us! 
I  kin  see  him  plain  as  day  —  he's  got  an  old 
cowbell  hitched  to  his  neck;  and  he's  shy  a 
couple  of  feathers  out  of  one  wing.  By  doctors, 
that's  somethin'  you  won't  see  every  day!  In 
all  my  born  days  I  ain't  never  seen  the  beat  of 
that!" 

Squire  Gathers  did  not  look;  he  only  cowered 
back  farther  under  the  buggy  top.  In  the 
pleasing  excitement  of  the  moment  his  com 
panion  took  no  heed,  though,  of  anything 
except  the  Belled  Buzzard. 

"Is  he  folio  win'  us?"  asked  the  squire  in  a 
curiously  flat,  weighted  voice. 

"Which  —  him?"  answered  the  constable, 
still  stretching  his  neck.  "No,  he's  gone  now 
—  gone  off  to  the  left  —  jest  a-zoonin',  like 
he'd  done  forgot  somethin'." 

And  Bristow's  place  was  to  the  left!  But 
there  might  still  be  time.  To  get  the  inquest 
over  and  the  body  underground  —  those  were 
the  main  things.  Ordinarily  humane  in  his 
treatment  of  stock,  Squire  Gathers  urged  the 
constable  to  greater  speed.  The  horse  was 
lathered  and  his  sides  heaved  wearily  as  they 
pounded  across  the  bridge  over  the  creek  which 

was  the  outlet  to  the  swamp  and  emerged  from 

. __ 


THE     BELLED     BUZZARD 

a  patch  of  woods  in  sight  of  Bristow's  farm 
buildings. 

The  house  was  set  on  a  little  hill  among 
cleared  fields  and  was  in  other  respects  much 
like  the  squire's  own  house  except  that  it  was 
smaller  and  not  so  well  painted.  There  was 
a  wide  yard  in  front  with  shade  trees  and  a  lye 
hopper  and  a  well-box,  and  a  paling  fence  with 
a  stile  in  it  instead  of  a  gate.  At  the  rear, 
behind  a  clutter  of  outbuildings  —  a  barn,  a 
smokehouse  and  a  corncrib  —  was  a  little 
peach  orchard,  and  flanking  the  house  on  the 
right  there  was  a  good-sized  cowyard,  empty 
of  stock  at  this  hour,  with  feedracks  ranged  in 
a  row  against  the  fence.  A  two-year-old  negro 
child,  bareheaded  and  barefooted  and  wearing 
but  a  single  garment,  was  grubbing  busily  in 
the  dirt  under  one  of  these  feedracks. 

To  the  front  fence  a  dozen  or  more  riding 
horses  were  hitched,  flicking  their  tails  at  the 
flies;  and  on  the  gallery  men  in  their  shirt 
sleeves  were  grouped.  An  old  negro  woman, 
with  her  head  tied  in  a  bandanna  and  a  man's 
old  slouch  hat  perched  upon  the  bandanna, 
peeped  out  from  behind  a  corner.  There  were 
gaunt  hound  dogs  wandering  about,  sniffing 
uneasily. 

Before  the  constable  had  the  horse  hitched 
the  squire  was  out  of  the  buggy  and  on  his 
way  up  the  footpath,  going  at  a  brisker  step 
than  the  squire  usually  traveled.  The  men 

on  the  porch  hailed  him  gravely  and  ceremo- 

_ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

niously,  as  befitting  an  occasion  of  solemnity. 
Afterward  some  of  them  recalled  the  look  in 
his  eye;  but  at  the  moment  they  noted  it  — 
if  they  noted  it  at  all  —  subconsciously. 

For  all  his  haste  the  squire,  as  was  also 
remembered  later,  was  almost  the  last  to  enter 
the  door;  and  before  he  did  enter  he  halted  and 
searched  the  flawless  sky  as  though  for  signs 
of  rain.  Then  he  hurried  on  after  the  others, 
who  clumped  single  file  along  a  narrow  little 
hall,  the  bare,  uncarpeted  floor  creaking  loudly 
under  their  heavy  farm  shoes,  and  entered  a 
good-sized  room  that  had  in  it,  among  other 
things,  a  high-piled  feather  bed  and  a  cottage 
organ  —  Bristow's  best  room,  now  to  be  placed 
at  the  disposal  of  the  law's  representatives 
for  the  inquest.  The  squire  took  the  largest 
chair  and  drew  it  to  the  very  center  of  the 
room,  in  front  of  a  fireplace,  where  the  grate 
was  banked  with  withering  asparagus  ferns. 
The  constable  took  his  place  formally  at  one 
side  of  the  presiding  official.  The  others  sat 
or  stood  about  where  they  could  find  room  — 
all  but  six  of  them,  whom  the  squire  picked  for 
his  coroner's  jury,  and  who  backed  themselves 
against  the  wall. 

The  squire  showed  haste.  He  drove  the 
preliminaries  forward  with  a  sort  of  tremulous 
insistence.  Bristow's  wife  brought  a  bucket 
of  fresh  drinking  water  and  a  gourd,  and 
almost  before  she  was  out  of  the  room  and  the 

door  closed  behind  her  the  squire  had  sworn  his 
__ 


THE     BELLED     BUZZARD 

jurors  and  was  calling  the  first  witness,  who  it 
seemed  likely  would  also  be  the  only  witness 
—  Bristow's  oldest  boy.  The  boy  wriggled 
in  confusion  as  he  sat  on  a  cane-bottomed 
chair  facing  the  old  magistrate.  All  there, 
barring  one  or  two,  had  heard  his  story  a  dozen 
times  already,  but  now  it  was  to  be  repeated 
under  oath;  and  so  they  bent  their  heads, 
listening  as  though  it  were  a  brand-new  tale. 
All  eyes  were  on  him;  none  were  fastened  on 
the  squire  as  he,  too,  gravely  bent  his  head, 
listening  —  listening. 

The  witness  began  —  but  had  no  more  than 
started  when  the  squire  gave  a  great,  screech 
ing  howl  and  sprang  from  his  chair  and  stag 
gered  backward,  his  eyes  popped  and  the 
pouch  under  his  chin  quivering  as  though  it 
had  a  separate  life  all  its  own.  Startled,  the 
constable  made  toward  him  and  they  struck 
together  heavily  and  went  down  —  both  on 
their  all  fours  —  right  in  front  of  the  fireplace. 

The  constable  scrambled  free  and  got  upon 
his  feet,  in  a  squat  of  astonishment,  with  his 
head  craned;  but  the  squire  stayed  upon  the 
floor,  face  downward,  his  feet  flopping  among 
the  rustling  asparagus  greens  —  a  picture  of 
slavering  animal  fear.  And  now  his  gagging 
screech  resolved  itself  into  articulate  speech. 

"I  done  it!"  they  made   out   his  shrieked 

words.     "I  done  it!     I  own  up  —  I  killed  him! 

He  aimed  fur  to  break  up  my  home  and  I 

tolled  him  off  into  Niggerwool  and  killed  him! 

[77] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

There's  a  hole  in  his  back  if  you'll  look  fur  it. 
I  done  it  —  oh,  I  done  it  —  and  I'll  tell  every 
thing  jest  like  it  happened  if  you'll  jest  keep 
that  thing  away  from  me!  Oh,  my  Lawdy! 
Don't  you  hear  it?  It's  a-comin'  clos'ter  and 
clos'ter  —  it's  a-comin'  after  me!  Keep  it 

away "  His  voice  gave  out  and  he  buried 

his  head  in  his  hands  and  rolled  upon  the 
gaudy  carpet. 

And  now  they  all  heard  what  he  had  heard 
first  —  they  heard  the  tonk-tonk-tonk  of  a 
cowbell,  coming  near  and  nearer  toward  them 
along  the  hallway  without.  It  was  as  though 
the  sound  floated  along.  There  was  no  creak 
of  footsteps  upon  the  loose,  bare  boards  — 
and  the  bell  jangled  faster  than  it  would 
dangling  from  a  cow's  neck.  The  sound 
came  right  to  the  door  and  Squire  Gathers 
wallowed  among  the  chair  legs. 

The  door  swung  open.  In  the  doorway 
stood  a  negro  child,  barefooted  and  naked 
except  for  a  single  garment,  eyeing  them  with 
serious,  rolling  eyes  —  and,  with  all  the  strength 
of  his  two  puny  arms,  proudly  but  solemnly 
tolling  a  small  rusty  cowbell  he  had  found  in 
the  cowyard. 


[78] 


Ill 

AN  OGURRENCE  UP  A 
SIDE  STREET 


SEE  if  he's  still  there,  will  you?"  said 
the  man  listlessly,  as  if  knowing  in 
advance  what  the  answer  would  be. 

The  woman,  who,  like  the  man,  was 
in  her  stocking  feet,  crossed  the  room,  closing 
the  door  with  all  softness  behind  her.  She 
felt  her  way  silently  through  the  darkness  of  a 
small  hallway,  putting  first  her  ear  and  then 
her  eye  to  a  tiny  cranny  in  some  thick  curtains 
at  a  front  window. 

She  looked  downward  and  outward  upon  one 
of  those  New  York  side  streets  that  is  precisely 
like  forty  other  New  York  side  streets:  two 
unbroken  lines  of  high-shouldered,  narrow- 
chested  brick-and-stone  houses,  rising  in  abrupt, 
straight  cliffs;  at  the  bottom  of  the  canyon  a 
narrow  river  of  roadway  with  manholes  and 
conduit  covers  dotting  its  channel  intermit- 
tently  like  scattered  stepping  stones;  and  on 

[79T  ~ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

either  side  wide,  flat  pavements,  as  though  the 
stream  had  fallen  to  low-water  mark  and 
left  bare  its  shallow  banks.  Daylight  would 
have  shown  most  of  the  houses  boarded  up, 
with  diamond-shaped  vents,  like  leering  eyes, 
cut  in  the  painted  planking  of  the  windows  and 
doors;  but  now  it  was  night  time  —  eleven 
o'clock  of  a  wet,  hot,  humid  night  of  the  late 
summer  —  and  the  street  was  buttoned  down 
its  length  in  the  double-breasted  fashion  of  a 
bandmaster's  coat  with  twin  rows  of  gas  lamps 
evenly  spaced.  Under  each  small  circle  of 
lighted  space  the  dripping,  black  asphalt  had 
a  slimy,  slick  look  like  the  sides  of  a  newly 
caught  catfish.  Elsewhere  the  whole  vista 
lay  all  in  close  shadow,  black  as  a  cave  mouth 
under  every  stoop  front  and  blacker  still  in 
the  hooded  basement  areas.  Only,  half  a  mile 
to  the  eastward  a  dim,  distant  flicker  showed 
where  Broadway  ran,  a  broad,  yellow  streak 
down  the  spine  of  the  city,  and  high  above 
the  broken  skyline  of  eaves  and  cornices  there 
rolled  in  cloudy  waves  the  sullen  red  radiance, 
born  of  a  million  electrics  and  the  flares  from 
gas  tanks  and  chimneys,  which  is  only  to  be 
seen  on  such  nights  as  this,  giving  to  the  heaven 
above  New  York  that  same  color  tone  you  find 
in  an  artist's  conception  of  Babylon  falling  or 
Rome  burning. 

From  where  the  woman  stood  at  the  window 
she  could  make  out  the  round,  white,  mush- 
room  top  of  a  policeman's  summer  helmet  as 
[80] 


UP     A     SIDE     STREET 

its  wearer  leaned  back,  half  sheltered  under 
the  narrow  portico  of  the  stoop  just  below  her; 
and  she  could  see  his  uniform  sleeve  and  his 
hand,  covered  with  a  white  cotton  glove,  come 
up,  carrying  a  handkerchief,  and  mop  the 
hidden  face  under  the  helmet's  brim.  The 
squeak  of  his  heavy  shoes  was  plainly  audible 
to  her  also.  While  she  stayed  there,  watch 
ing  and  listening,  two  pedestrians  —  and  only 
two  —  passed  on  her  side  of  the  street :  a 
messenger  boy  in  a  glistening  rubber  poncho 
going  west  and  a  man  under  an  umbrella  going 
east.  Each  was  hurrying  along  until  he  came 
just  opposite  her,  and  then,  as  though  con 
trolled  by  the  same  set  of  strings,  each  stopped 
short  and  looked  up  curiously  at  the  blind,  dark 
house  and  at  the  figure  lounging  in  the  doorway, 
then  hurried  on  without  a  word,  leaving  the 
silent  policeman  fretfully  mopping  his  moist 
face  and  tugging  at  the  wilted  collar  about 
his  neck. 

After  a  minute  or  two  at  her  peephole  behind 
the  window  curtains  above,  the  woman  passed 
back  through  the  door  to  the  inner,  middle 
room  where  the  man  sat. 

"Still  there,"  she  said  lifelessly  in  the  half 
whisper  that  she  had  come  to  use  almost 
altogether  these  last  few  days;  "still  there 
and  sure  to  stay  there  until  another  one  just 
like  him  comes  to  take  his  place.  What  else 
did  you  expect?" 

The  man  only  nodded  absently  and  went  on 
_ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

peeling  an  overripe  peach,  striking  out  con 
stantly,  with  the  hand  that  held  the  knife,  at 
the  flies.  They  were  green  flies  —  huge,  shiny- 
backed,  buzzing,  persistent  vermin.  There 
were  a  thousand  of  them;  there  seemed  to  be 
a  million  of  them.  They  filled  the  shut-in 
room  with  their  vile  humming;  they  swarmed 
everywhere  in  the  half  light.  They  were 
thickest,  though,  in  a  corner  at  the  back,  where 
there  was  a  closed,  white  door.  Here  a  great 
knot  of  them,  like  an  iridescent,  shimmering 
jewel,  was  clustered  about  the  keyhole.  They 
scrolled  the  white  enameled  panels  with  intri 
cate,  shifting  patterns,  and  in  pairs  and  singly 
they  promenaded  busily  on  the  white  porcelain 
knob,  giving  it  the  appearance  of  being  alive 
and  having  a  motion  of  its  own. 

It  was  stiflingly  hot  and  sticky  in  the  room. 
The  sweat  rolled  down  the  man's  face  as  he 
peeled  his  peach  and  pared  some  half-rotted 
spots  out  of  it.  He  protected  it  with  a  cupped 
palm  as  he  bit  into  it.  One  huge  green  fly 
flipped  nimbly  under  the  fending  hand  and  lit 
on  the  peach.  With  a  savage  little  snarl  of 
disgust  and  loathing  the  man  shook  the  cling 
ing  insect  off  and  with  the  knife  carved  away 
the  place  where  its  feet  had  touched  the  soft 
fruit.  Then  he  went  on  munching,  meanwhile 
furtively  watching  the  woman.  She  was  on 
the  opposite  side  of  a  small  center-table  from 
him,  with  her  face  in  her  hands,  shaking  her 
head  with  a  little  shuddering  motion  whenever 
[82] 


UP     A     SIDE     STREET 


one  of  the  flies  settled  on  her  close-cropped  hair 
or  brushed  her  bare  neck. 

He  was  a  smallish  man,  with  a  suggestion  of 
something  dapper  about  him  even  in  his  present 
unkempt  disorder;  he  might  have  been  hand 
some,  in  a  weakly  effeminate  way,  had  not 
Nature  or  some  mishap  given  his  face  a  twist 
that  skewed  it  all  to  one  side,  drawing  all  of 
his  features  out  of  focus,  like  a  reflection  viewed 
in  a  flawed  mirror.  He  was  no  heavier  than 
the  woman  and  hardly  as  tall.  She,  however, 
looked  less  than  her  real  height,  seeing  that 
she  was  dressed,  like  a  half-grown  boy,  in  a 
soft-collared  shirt  open  at  the  throat  and  a 
pair  of  loose  trousers.  She  had  large  but 
rather  regular  features,  pouting  lips,  a  clear 
brown  skin  and  full,  prominent  brown  eyes; 
and  one  of  them  had  a  pronounced  cast  in 
it  —  an  imperfection  already  made  familiar 
by  picture  and  printed  description  to  sundry 
millions  of  newspaper  readers.  For  this  was 
Ella  Gilmorris,  the  woman  in  the  case  of  the 
Gilmorris  murder,  about  which  the  continent 
of  North  America  was  now  reading  and  talking. 
And  the  little  man  with  the  twisted  face,  who 
sat  across  from  her,  gnawing  a  peach  stone 
clean,  was  the  notorious  "Doctor"  Harris 
Devine,  alias  Vanderburg,  her  accomplice,  and 
worth  more  now  to  society  in  his  present  untidy 
state  than  ever  before  at  any  one  moment  of 
his  whole  discreditable  life,  since  for  his  capture 
the  people  of  the  state  of  New  York  stood 
[S3] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

willing  to  pay  the  sum  of  one  thousand  dollars, 
which  tidy  reward  one  of  the  afternoon  papers 
had  increased  by  another  thousand. 

Everywhere  detectives  —  amateurs  and  the 
kind  who  work  for  hire  —  were  seeking  the 
pair  who  at  this  precise  moment  faced  each 
other  across  a  little  center-table  in  the  last 
place  any  searcher  would  have  suspected  or 
expected  them  to  be  —  on  the  second  floor  of 
the  house  in  which  the  late  Cassius  Gilmorris 
had  been  killed.  This,  then,  was  the  situation: 
inside,  these  two  fugitives,  watchful,  silent, 
their  eyes  red-rimmed  for  lack  of  sleep,  their 
nerves  raw  and  tingling  as  though  rasped  with 
files,  each  busy  with  certain  private  plans,  each 
fighting  off  constantly  the  touch  of  the  nasty 
scavenger  flies  that  flickered  and  flitted  iri- 
descently  about  them;  outside,  in  the  steamy, 
hot  drizzle,  with  his  back  to  the  locked  and 
double-locked  door,  a  leg- weary  policeman, 
believing  that  he  guarded  a  house  all  empty 
except  for  such  evidences  as  yet  remained  of 
the  Gilmorris  murder. 

It  was  one  of  those  small,  chancy  things  that 
so  often  disarrange  the  best  laid  plots  of  mur 
derers  that  had  dished  their  hope  of  a  clean 
getaway  and  brought  them  back,  at  the  last, 
to  the  starting  point.  If  the  plumber's  helper, 
who  was  sent  to  cure  a  bathtub  of  leaking  in 
the  house  next  door,  had  not  made  a  mistake 
and  come  to  the  wrong  number;  and  if  they, 


UP     A     SIDE     STREET 

in  the  haste  of  flight,  had  not  left  an  area  door 
unfastened ;  and  if  this  young  plumbing  appren 
tice,  stumbling  his  way  upstairs  on  the  hunt 
for  the  misbehaving  drain,  had  not  opened  the 
white  enameled  door  and  found  inside  there 
what  he  did  find  —  if  this  small  sequence  of 
incidents  had  not  occurred  as  it  did  and  when 
it  did,  or  if  only  it  had  been  delayed  another 
twenty-four  hours,  or  even  twelve,  everything 
might  have  turned  out  differently.  But  fate, 
to  call  it  by  its  fancy  name  —  coincidence,  to 
use  its  garden  one  —  interfered,  as  it  usually 
does  in  cases  such  as  this.  And  so  here  they 
were. 

The  man  had  been  on  his  way  to  the  steam 
ship  office  to  get  the  tickets  when  an  eruption 
of  newsboys  boiled  out  of  Mail  Street  into 
Broadway,  with  extras  on  their  arms,  all  shout 
ing  out  certain  words  that  sent  him  scurrying 
back  in  a  panic  to  the  small,  obscure  family 
hotel  in  the  lower  thirties  where  the  woman 
waited.  From  that  moment  it  was  she,  really, 
who  took  the  initiative  in  all  the  efforts  to 
break  through  the  doubled  and  tripled  lines 
that  the  police  machinery  looped  about  the 
five  boroughs  of  the  city. 

At  dark  that  evening  "Mr.  and  Mrs.  A. 
Thompson,  of  Jersey  City,"  a  quiet  couple 
who  went  closely  muffled  up,  considering  that 
it  was  August,  and  carrying  heavy  valises, 
took  quarters  at  a  dingy  furnished  room  house 

on   a  miscalled   avenue  of  Brooklyn   not  far 
_ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

from  the  Wall  Street  ferries  and  overlooking 
the  East  River  waterfront  from  its  bleary  back 
windows.  Two  hours  later  a  very  different-look 
ing  pair  issued  quietly  from  a  side  entrance  of 
this  place  and  vanished  swiftly  down  toward  the 
docks.  The  thing  was  well  devised  and  carried 
out  well  too;  yet  by  morning  the  detectives, 
already  ranging  and  quartering  the  town  as 
bird-dogs  quarter  a  brier-field,  had  caught 
up  again  and  pieced  together  the  broken  ends 
of  the  trail;  and,  thanks  to  them  and  the 
.newspapers,  a  good  many  thousand  wideawake 
persons  were  on  the  lookout  for  a  plump,  brown- 
skinned  young  woman  with  a  cast  in  her  right 
eye,  wearing  a  boy's  disguise  and  accompanied 
by  a  slender  little  man  carrying  his  head  slightly 
to  one  side,  who  when  last  seen  wore  smoked 
glasses  and  had  his  face  extensively  bandaged, 
as  though  suffering  from  a  toothache. 

Then  had  followed  days  and  nights  of  blind 
twisting  and  dodging  and  hiding,  with  the  hunt 
growing  warmer  behind  them  all  the  time. 
Through  this  they  were  guided  and  at  times 
aided  by  things  printed  in  the  very  papers 
that  worked  the  hardest  to  run  them  down. 
Once  they  ventured  as  far  as  the  outer  entrance 
of  the  great,  new  uptown  terminal,  and  turned 
away,  too  far  gone  and  sick  with  fear  to  dare 
run  the  gauntlet  of  the  waiting  room  and  the 
train-shed.  Once  —  because  they  saw  a  made- 
up  Central  Office  man  in  every  lounging  long 
shoreman,  and  were  not  so  far  wrong  either  — 
__ 


UP     A     SIDE     STREET 

they  halted  at  the  street  end  of  one  of  the 
smaller  piers  and  from  there  watched  a  grimy 
little  foreign  boat  that  carried  no  wireless 
masts  and  that  might  have  taken  them  to  any 
one  of  half  a  dozen  obscure  banana  ports  of 
South  America  —  watched  her  while  she  hic 
coughed  out  into  midstream  and  straightened 
down  the  river  for  the  open  bay  —  watched 
her  out  of  sight  and  then  fled  again  to  their 
newest  hiding  place  in  the  lower  East  Side 
in  a  cold  sweat,  with  the  feeling  that  every 
casual  eye  glance  from  every  chance  passer-by 
carried  suspicion  and  recognition  in  its  flash, 
that  every  briskening  footstep  on  the  pave 
ment  behind  them  meant  pursuit. 

Once  in  that  tormented  journey  there  was  a 
sudden  jingle  of  metal,  like  rattling  handcuffs, 
in  the  man's  ear  and  a  heavy  hand  fell  detain- 
ingly  on  his  shoulder  —  and  he  squeaked  like 
a  caught  shore-bird  and  shrunk  away  from 
under  the  rough  grips  of  a  truckman  who  had 
yanked  him  clear  of  a  lurching  truck  horse 
tangled  in  its  own  traces.  Then,  finally,  had 
come  a  growing  distrust  for  their  latest  land 
lord,  a  stolid  Russian  Jew  who  read  no  papers 
and  knew  no  English,  and  saw  in  his  pale  pair 
of  guests  only  an  American  lady  and  gentle 
man  who  kept  much  to  their  room  and  paid 
well  in  advance  for  everything;  and  after 
that,  in  the  hot  rainy  night,  the  flight  afoot 
across  weary  miles  of  soaking  cross  streets 

and   up   through    ill-lighted,   shabby    avenues 
_ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

to  the  one  place  of  refuge  left  open  to  them. 
They  had  learned  from  the  newspapers,  at 
once  a  guide  and  a  bane,  a  friend  and  a  dogging 
enemy,  that  the  place  was  locked  up,  now  that 
the  police  had  got  through  searching  it,  and 
that  the  coroner's  people  held  the  keys.  And 
the  woman  knew  of  a  faulty  catch  on  a  rear 
cellar  window,  and  so,  in  a  fit  of  stark  despera 
tion  bordering  on  lunacy,  back  they  ran,  like 
a  pair  of  spent  foxes  circling  to  a  burrow  from 
which  they  have  been  smoked  out. 

Again  it  was  the  woman  who  picked  for  her 
companion  the  easiest  path  through  the  inky- 
black  alley,  and  with  her  own  hands  she  pulled 
down  noiselessly  the  broken  slats  of  the  rotting 
wooden  wall  at  the  back  of  the  house.  And 
then,  soon,  they  were  inside,  with  the  reeking 
heat  of  the  boxed-up  house  and  the  knowledge 
that  at  any  moment  discovery  might  come 
bursting  in  upon  them  —  inside  with  their 
busy  thoughts  and  the  busy  green  flies.  How 
persistent  the  things  were  —  shake  them  off  a 
hundred  times  and  back  they  came  buzzing! 
And  where  had  they  all  come  from?  There 
had  been  none  of  them  about  before,  surely, 
and  now  their  maddening,  everlasting  droning 
filled  the  ear.  And  what  nasty  creatures  they 
were,  forever  cleaning  their  shiny  wings  and 
rubbing  the  ends  of  their  forelegs  together 
with  the  loathsome  suggestion  of  little  grave- 
diggers  anointing  their  palms.  To  the  woman, 
at  least,  these  flies  almost  made  bearable  the 
~ [88] 


UP     A     SIDE     STREET 

realization  that,  at  best,  this  stopping  point 
could  be  only  a  temporary  one,  and  that  within 
a  few  hours  a  fresh  start  must  somehow  be 
made,  with  fresh  dangers  to  face  at  every 
turning. 

It  was  during  this  last  hideous  day  of  flight 
and  terror  that  the  thing  which  had  been  grow 
ing  in  the  back  part  of  the  brain  of  each  of 
them  began  to  assume  shape  and  a  definite 
aspect.  The  man  had  the  craftier  mind,  but 
the  woman  had  a  woman's  intuition,  and  she 
already  had  read  his  thoughts  while  yet  he 
had  no  clue  to  hers.  For  the  primal  instinct 
of  self-preservation,  blazing  up  high,  had 
burned  away  the  bond  of  bogus  love  that  held 
them  together  while  they  were  putting  her 
drunkard  of  a  husband  out  of  the  way,  and 
now  there  only  remained  to  tie  them  fast  this 
partnership  of  a  common  guilt. 

In  these  last  few  hours  they  had  both  come 
to  know  that  together  there  was  no  chance  of 
ultimate  escape;  traveling  together  the  very 
disparity  of  their  compared  appearances  marked 
them  with  a  fatal  and  unmistakable  con- 
spicuousness,  as  though  they  were  daubed  with 
red  paint  from  the  same  paint  brush;  staying 
together  meant  ruin  —  certain,  sure.  Now, 
then,  separated  and  going  singly,  there  might 
be  a  thin  strand  of  hope.  Yet  the  man  felt 
that,  parted  a  single  hour  from  the  woman, 
and  she  still  alive,  his  wofully  small  prospect 
[89] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

would  diminish  and  shrink  to  the  vanishing 
point  —  New  York  juries  being  most  notoriously 
easy  upon  women  murderers  who  give  them 
selves  up  and  turn  state's  evidence;  and,  by 
the  same  mistaken  processes  of  judgment, 
notoriously  hard  upon  their  male  accomplices 
—  half  a  dozen  such  instances  had  been  play 
ing  in  flashes  across  his  memory  already. 

Neither  had  so  much  as  hinted  at  separat 
ing.  The  man  didn't  speak,  because  of  a 
certain  idea  that  had  worked  itself  all  out 
hours  before  within  his  side-flattened  skull. 
The  woman  likewise  had  refrained  from  putting 
in  words  the  suggestion  that  had  been  upper 
most  in  her  brain  from  the  time  they  broke 
into  the  locked  house.  Some  darting  look  of 
quick,  malignant  suspicion  from  him,  some 
inner  warning  sense,  held  her  mute  at  first; 
and  later,  as  the  newborn  hate  and  dread  of 
him  grew  and  mastered  her  and  she  began  to 
canvass  ways  and  means  to  a  certain  end,  she 
stayed  mute  still. 

Whatever  was  to  be  done  must  be  done 
quietly,  without  a  struggle  —  the  least  sound 
might  arouse  the  policeman  at  the  door  below. 
One  thing  was  in  her  favor  —  she  knew  he  was 
not  armed;  he  had  the  contempt  and  the 
fear  of  a  tried  and  proved  poisoner  for  cruder 
lethal  tools. 

It  was  characteristic  also  of  the  difference 
between  these  two  that  Devine  should  have 
had  his  plan  stage-set  and  put  to  motion  long 
[90] 


UP     A     SIDE     STREET 

before  the  woman  dreamed  of  acting.  It  was 
all  within  his  orderly  scheme  of  the  thing 
proposed  that  he,  a  shrinking  coward,  should 
have  set  his  squirrel  teeth  hard  and  risked 
detection  twice  in  that  night:  once  to  buy  a 
basket  of  overripe  fruit  from  a  dripping  Italian 
at  a  sidewalk  stand,  taking  care  to  get  some 
peaches  —  he  just  must  have  a  peach,  he  had 
explained  to  her;  and  once  again  when  he 
entered  a  dark  little  store  on  Second  Avenue, 
where  liquors  were  sold  in  their  original  pack 
ages,  and  bought  from  a  sleepy,  stupid  clerk 
two  bottles  of  a  cheap  domestic  champagne  — 
"to  give  us  the  strength  for  making  a  fresh 
start,"  he  told  her  glibly,  as  an  excuse  for  tak 
ing  this  second  risk.  So,  then,  with  the  third 
essential  already  resting  at  the  bottom  of  an 
inner  waistcoat  pocket,  he  was  prepared;  and 
he  had  been  waiting  for  his  opportunity  from 
the  moment  when  they  crept  in  through  the 
basement  window  and  felt  their  way  along,  she 
resolutely  leading,  to  the  windowless,  shrouded 
middle  room  here  on  the  second  floor. 

How  she  hated  him,  feared  him  too!  He 
could  munch  his  peaches  and  uncork  his  warm, 
cheap  wine  in  this  very  room,  with  that  bath 
room  just  yonder  and  these  flies  all  about. 
From  under  her  fingers,  interlaced  over  her 
forehead,  her  eyes  roved  past  him,  searching 
the  littered  room  for  the  twentieth  time  in  the 
hour,  looking,  seeking  —  and  suddenly  they 
[91] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

fell  on  something  —  a  crushed  and  rumpled 
hat  of  her  own,  a  milliner's  masterpiece,  laden 
with  florid  plumage,  lying  almost  behind  him 
on  a  couch  end  where  some  prying  detective 
had  dropped  it,  with  a  big,  round  black  button 
shining  dully  from  the  midst  of  its  damaged 
tulle  crown.  She  knew  that  button  well.  It 
was  the  imitation- jet  head  of  a  hatpin  —  a 
steel  hatpin  —  that  was  ten  inches  long  and 
maybe  longer. 

She  looked  and  looked  at  the  round,  dull 
knob,  like  a  mystic  held  by  a  hypnotist's 
crystal  ball,  and  she  began  to  breathe  a  little 
faster;  she  could  feel  her  resolution  tighten 
within  her  like  a  turning  screw. 

Beneath  her  brows,  heavy  and  thick  for  a 
woman's,  her  eyes  flitted  back  to  the  man. 
With  the  careful  affectation  of  doing  nothing  at 
all,  a  theatricalism  that  she  detected  instantly, 
but  for  which  she  could  guess  no  reason,  he 
was  cutting  away  at  the  damp,  close-gnawed 
seed  of  the  peach,  trying  apparently  to  fashion 
some  little  trinket  —  a  toy  basket,  possibly 
—  from  it.  His  fingers  moved  deftly  over  its 
slick,  wet  surface.  He  had  already  poured 
out  some  of  the  champagne.  One  of  the  pint 
bottles  stood  empty,  with  the  distorted  button- 
headed  cork  lying  beside  it,  and  in  two  glasses 
the  yellow  wine  was  fast  going  flat  and  dead  in 
that  stifling  heat.  It  still  spat  up  a  few  little 
bubbles  to  the  surface,  as  though  minute 
creatures  were  drowning  in  it  down  below. 

_ 


UP     A     SIDE     STREET 

The  man  was  sweating  more  than  ever,  so  that, 
under  the  single,  low-turned  gas  jet,  his  crooked 
face  had  a  greasy  shine  to  it.  A  church  clock 
down  in  the  next  block  struck  twelve  slowly. 
The  sleepless  flies  buzzed  evilly. 

"Look  out  again,  won't  you?"  he  said  for 
perhaps  the  tenth  time  in  two  hours.  "There's 
a  chance,  you  know,  that  he  might  be  gone  — 
just  a  bare  chance.  And  be  sure  you  close 
the  door  into  the  hall  behind  you,"  he  added 
as  if  by  an  afterthought.  "You  left  it  ajar 
once  —  this  light  might  show  through  the 
window  draperies." 

At  his  bidding  she  rose  more  willingly  than 
at  any  time  before.  To  reach  the  door  she 
passed  within  a  foot  of  the  end  of  the  couch, 
and  watching  over  her  shoulder  at  his  hunched- 
up  back  she  paused  there  for  the  smallest  frac 
tion  of  time.  The  damaged  picture  hat  slid 
off  on  the  floor  with  a  soft  little  thud,  but  he 
never  turned  around. 

The  instant,  though,  that  the  hall  door  closed 
behind  her  the  man's  hands  became  briskly 
active.  He  fumbled  in  an  inner  pocket  of  his 
unbuttoned  waistcoat;  then  his  right  hand, 
holding  a  small  cylindrical  vial  of  a  colorless 
liquid,  passed  swiftly  over  one  of  the  two 
glasses  of  slaking  champagne  and  hovered 
there  a  second.  A  few  tiny  globules  fell 
dimpling  into  the  top  of  the  yellow  wine,  then 
vanished;  a  heavy  reek,  like  the  smell  of 
crushed  peach  kernels,  spread  through  the 
[931 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

whole  room.  In  the  same  motion  almost  he 
recorked  the  little  bottle,  stowed  it  out  of  sight, 
and  with  a  quick,  wrenching  thrust  that  bent 
the  small  blade  of  his  penknife  in  its  socket  he 
split  the  peach  seed  in  two  lengthwise  and 
with  his  thumb-nail  bruised  the  small  brown 
kernel  lying  snugly  within.  He  dropped  the 
knife  and  the  halved  seed  and  began  sipping 
at  the  undoctored  glass  of  champagne,  not 
forgetting  even  then  to  wave  his  fingers  above 
it  to  keep  the  winged  green  tormentors  out. 

The  door  at  the  front  reopened  and  the 
woman  came  in.  Her  thoughts  were  not  upon 
smells,  but  instinctively  she  sniffed  at  the 
thick  scent  on  the  poisoned  air. 

"I  accidentally  split  this  peach  seed  open," 
he  said  quickly,  with  an  elaborate  explanatory 
air.  "Stenches  up  the  whole  place,  don't  it? 
Come,  take  that  other  glass  of  champagne  — 
it  will  do  you  good  to " 

Perhaps  it  was  some  subtle  sixth  sense  that 
warned  him;  perhaps  the  lightning-quick  reali 
zation  that  she  had  moved  right  alongside  him, 
poised  and  set  to  strike.  At  any  rate  he 
started  to  fling  up  his  head  —  too  late!  The 
needle  point  of  the  jet-headed  hatpin  entered 
exactly  at  the  outer  corner  of  his  right  eye  and 
passed  backward  for  nearly  its  full  length  into 
his  brain  —  smoothly,  painlessly,  swiftly.  He 
gave  a  little  surprised  gasp,  almost  like  a  sob, 
and  lolled  his  head  back  against  the  chair  rest, 

like  a  man  who  has  grown  suddenly  tired.     The 
_ 


UP     A     SIDE     STREET 

hand  that  held  the  champagne  glass  relaxed 
naturally  and  the  glass  turned  over  on  its  side 
with  a  small  tinkling  sound  and  spilled  its 
thin  contents  on  the  table. 

It  had  been  easier  than  she  had  thought  it 
would  be.  She  stepped  back,  still  holding  the 
hatpin.  She  moved  around  from  behind  him, 
and  then  she  saw  his  face,  half  upturned,  almost 
directly  beneath  the  low  light.  There  was  no 
blood,  no  sign  even  of  the  wound,  but  his  jaw 
had  dropped  down  unpleasantly,  showing  the 
ends  of  his  lower  front  teeth,  and  his  eyes 
stared  up  unwinkingly  with  a  puzzled,  almost 
a  disappointed,  look  in  them.  A  green  fly  lit 
at  the  outer  corner  of  his  right  eye;  more  green 
flies  were  coming.  And  he  didn't  put  up  his 
hand  to  brush  it  away.  He  let  it  stay  —  he 
let  it  stay  there. 

With  her  eyes  still  fixed  on  his  face,  the 
woman  reached  out,  feeling  for  her  glass  of 
the  champagne.  She  felt  that  she  needed  it 
now,  and  at  a  gulp  she  took  a  good  half  of  it 
down  her  throat. 

She  put  the  glass  down  steadily  enough  on 
the  table;  but  into  her  eyes  came  the  same 
puzzled,  baffled  look  that  his  wore,  and  almost 
gently  she  slipped  down  into  the  chair  facing 
him. 

Then  her  jaw  lolled  a  little  too,  and  some  of 
the  other  flies  came  buzzing  toward  her. 


[95] 


IV 

ANOTHER    OF    THOSE    CUB 
REPORTER    STORIES 


THE   first   time   I    saw   Major   Putnam 
Stone  I  didn't  see  him  first.     To  be 
exact,   I  heard  him  first,   and  then  I 
walked  round  the  end  of  a  seven-foot 
partition  and  saw  him. 

I  had  just  gone  to  work  for  the  Evening  Press. 
As  I  recall  now  it  was  my  second  day,  and  I 
hadn't  begun  to  feel  at  home  there  yet,  and 
probably  was  more  sensitive  to  outside  sights 
and  noises  than  I  would  ever  again  be  in  that 
place.  Generally  speaking,  when  a  reporter 
settles  down  to  his  knitting,  which  in  his  case 
is  his  writing,  he  becomes  impervious  to  all 
disturbances  excepting  those  that  occur  inside 
his  own  brainpan.  If  he  couldn't,  he  wouldn't 
amount  to  shucks  in  his  trade.  Give  him  a 
good,  live-action  story  to  write  for  an  edition 
going  to  press  in  about  nine  minutes,  and  the 
rattles  and  slams  of  half  a  dozen  typewriting 

machines,  and  the  blattings  of  a  pestered  city 

_ _  - 


CUB     REPORTER     STORIES 

editor,  and  the  gabble  of  a  couple  of  copy  boys 
at  his  elbow,  and  all  the  rest  of  it  won't  worry 
him.  He  may  not  think  he  hears  it,  but  he 
does,  only  instead  of  being  distracting  it  is 
stimulating.  It's  all  a  part  of  the  mechanism 
of  the  shop,  helping  him  along  unconsciously  to 
speed  and  efficiency.  I've  often  thought  that, 
when  I  was  handling  a  good,  bloody  murder 
story,  say,  it  would  tone  up  my  style  to  have 
a  phonograph  about  ten  feet  away  grinding  out 
The  Last  Ravings  of  John  McCullough.  Any 
way,  I  am  sure  it  wouldn't  do  any  harm.  A 
brass  band  playing  a  John  Philip  Sousa  march 
makes  fine  accompaniment  to  write  copy  to. 
I've  done  it  before  now,  covering  parades  and 
conventions,  and  I  know. 

But  on  this  particular  occasion  I  was,  as  I 
say,  new  to  the  job  and  maybe  a  little  nervous 
to  boot,  and  as  I  sat  there,  trying  to  frame  a 
snappy  opening  paragraph  for  the  interview  I 
had  just  brought  back  with  me  from  one  of 
the  hotels,  I  became  aware  of  a  voice  somewhere 
in  the  immediate  vicinity,  a  voice  that  didn't 
jibe  in  with  my  thoughts.  At  the  moment  I 
stopped  to  listen  it  was  saying:  "As  for  me, 
sir,  I  have  always  contended  that  the  ultimate 
fate  of  the  cause  was  due  in  great  measure  to 
the  death  of  Albert  Sidney  Johnston  at  Shiloh 
on  the  evening  of  the  first  day's  fight.  Now 
then,  what  would  have  been  the  final  result 
if  Albert  Sidney  Johnston  had  lived?  I  ask 

you,   gentlemen,   what   would   have  been   the 
_ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

final  result  if  Albert  Sidney  Johnston  had 
lived?" 

Across  the  room  from  me  I  heard  Devore 
give  a  hollow  groan.  His  desk  was  backed 
right  up  against  the  cross  partition,  and  the 
partition  was  built  of  thin  pine  boards  and  was 
like  a  sounding  board  in  his  ear.  Devore  was 
city  editor. 

"Oh,  thunder!"  he  said,  half  under  his 
breath,  "I'll  be  the  goat!  What  would  have 
been  the  result  if  Albert  Sidney  Johnston  had 
lived?"  He  looked  at  me  and  gave  a  wink  of 
serio-comic  despair,  and  then  he  ran  his  blue 
pencil  up  through  his  hair  and  left  a  blue 
streak  like  a  scar  on  his  scalp.  Devore  was  one 
of  the  few  city  editors  I  have  ever  seen  who 
used  that  tool  which  all  of  them  are  popularly 
supposed  to  handle  so  murderously  —  a  blue 
pencil.  And  as  he  had  a  habit,  when  he  was 
flustered  or  annoyed  —  and  that  was  most  of 
the  time  —  of  scratching  his  head  with  the 
point  end  of  it,  his  forehead  under  the  hair 
roots  was  usually  streaked  with  purplish-blue 
tracings,  like  a  fly-catcher's  egg. 

The  voice,  which  had  a  deep  and  space-filling 
quality  to  it,  continued  to  come  through  and 
over  the  partition  that  divided  off  our  cubby 
hole  of  a  workroom  —  called  a  city  room  by 
courtesy  —  from  the  space  where  certain  other 
members  of  the  staff  had  their  desks.  I  got 
up  from  my  place  and  stepped  over  to  where 
the  thin  wall  ended  in  a  doorway,  being  minded 

~~        [93] " ~ 


CUB     REPORTER     STORIES 

to  have  a  look  at  the  speaker.  The  voice 
sounded  as  though  it  must  belong  to  a  big  man 
with  a  barrel-organ  chest.  I  was  surprised  to 
find  that  it  didn't. 

Its  owner  was  sitting  in  a  chair  in  the  middle 
of  a  little  space  cluttered  up  with  discarded 
exchanges  and  galley  proofs.  He  was  rather 
a  small  man,  short  but  compact.  He  had  his 
hat  off  and  his  hair,  which  was  thin  but  fine 
as  silk  floss,  was  combed  back  over  his  ears 
and  sprayed  out  behind  in  a  sort  of  mane 
effect.  It  had  been  red  hair  once,  but  was  now 
so  thickly  streaked  with  white  that  it  had 
become  a  faded  brindle  color.  I  took  notice 
of  this  first  because  his  back  was  toward  me; 
in  a  second  or  two  he  turned  his  head  sideways 
and  I  saw  that  he  had  exactly  the  face  to 
match  the  hair.  It  was  a  round,  plump,  elderly 
face,  with  a  short  nose,  delicately  pink  at  the 
tip.  The  eyes  were  a  pale  blue,  and  just  under 
the  lower  lip,  which  protruded  slightly,  was 
a  small  gray-red  goatee,  sticking  straight  out 
from  a  cleft  in  the  chin  like  a  dab  of  a  sandy 
sheep's  wool.  Also,  as  the  speaker  swung 
himself  further  round,  I  took  note  of  a  shirt  of 
plaited  white  linen  billowing  out  over  his  chest 
and  ending  at  the  top  in  a  starchy  yet  rumply 
collar  that  rolled  majestically  and  Byronically 
clear  up  under  his  ears.  Under  the  collar  was 
loosely  knotted  a  black-silk  tie  such  as  sailors 
wear.  His  vest  was  unbuttoned,  all  except  the 
two  lowermost  buttons,  and  the  sleeves  of  his 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

coat  were  turned  back  neatly  off  his  wrists. 
This,  though,  could  not  have  been  on  account 
of  the  heat,  because  the  weather  wasn't  very 
hot  yet.  I  learned  later  that,  winter  or 
summer,  he  always  kept  his  coat  sleeves  turned 
back  and  the  upper  buttons  of  his  vest  un 
fastened.  His  hands  were  small  and  plump, 
and  his  feet  were  small  too  and  daintily  shod 
in  low,  square-toed  shoes.  About  the  whole 
man  there  was  an  air  somehow  of  full-bloomed 
foppishness  gone  to  tassel  —  as  though  having 
been  a  dandy  once,  he  was  now  merely  neat 
and  precise  in  his  way  of  dress. 

He  was  talking  along  with  the  death  of  Albert 
Sidney  Johnston  for  his  subject,  not  seeming 
to  notice  that  his  audience  wasn't  deeply 
interested.  He  had,  it  seemed,  a  way  of  stat 
ing  a  proposition  as  a  fact,  as  an  indisputable, 
everlasting,  eternal  fact,  an  immutable  thing. 
It  became  immutable  through  his  way  of 
stating  it.  Then  he  would  frame  it  in  the  form 
of  a  question  and  ask  it.  Then  he  would 
answer  it  himself  and  go  right  ahead. 

Boynton,  the  managing  editor,  was  coiled 
up  at  his  desk,  wearing  a  look  of  patient  endur 
ance  on  his  face.  Harty,  the  telegraph  editor, 
was  trying  to  do  his  work  —  trying,  I  say, 
because  the  orator  was  booming  away  like  a 
bittern  within  three  feet  of  him  and  Harty 
plainly  was  pestered  and  fretful.  Really  the 
only  person  in  sight  who  seemed  entertained 

was  Sidley,  the  exchange  editor,  a  young  man 

_  __        _ 


CUB     REPORTER     STORIES 

with  hair  that  had  turned  white  before  its  time 
and  in  his  eye  the  devil-driven  look  of  a  man 
who  drinks  hard,  not  because  he  wants  to  drink 
but  because  he  can't  help  drinking.  Sidley, 
as  I  was  to  find  out  later,  had  less  cause  to 
care  for  the  old  man  than  anybody  about  the 
shop,  for  he  used  to  disarrange  Sidley's  neatly 
piled  exchanges,  pawing  through  them  for  his 
favorite  papers.  But  Sidley  could  forget  his 
own  grievances  in  watchful  enjoyment  of  the 
dumb  sufferings  of  Harty,  whom  he  hated,  as 
I  came  to  know,  with  the  blind  hate  a  dipso 
maniac  often  has  for  any  mild  and  perfectly 
harmless  individual. 

As  I  stood  there  taking  in  the  picture,  the 
speaker,  sensing  a  stranger's  presence,  faced 
clear  about  and  saw  me.  He  nodded  with  a 
grave  courtesy,  and  then  paused  a  moment  as 
though  expecting  that  one  of  the  others  would 
introduce  us.  None  of  the  others  did  introduce 
us  though,  so  he  went  ahead  talking  about 
Albert  Sidney  Johnston's  death,  and  I  turned 
away.  I  stopped  by  Devore's  desk. 

"Who  is  he?  "I  asked. 

"That,"  he  said,  with  a  kind  of  leashed  and 
restrained  ferocity  in  his  voice,  "is  Major 
Putnam  P.  Stone  —  and  the  P  stands  for  Pest, 
which  is  his  middle  name  —  late  of  the  Southern 
Confederacy." 

"Picturesque-looking  old  fellow,  isn't  he?" 
I  said. 

"Picturesque   old   nuisance,"    he   said,    and 

TToTl 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

jabbed  at  his  scalp  with  his  pencil  as  though 
he  meant  to  puncture  his  skull.  "Wait  until 
you've  been  here  a  few  weeks  and  you'll  have 
another  name  for  him." 

"Well,  anyway,  he's  got  a  good  carrying 
voice,"  I  said,  rather  at  a  loss  to  understand 
Devore's  bitterness. 

"Great,"  he  mocked  venomously;  "you  can 
hear  it  a  mile.  I  hear  it  in  my  sleep.  So  will 
you  when  you  get  to  know  him,  the  old  bore!" 

In  due  time  I  did  get  to  know  Major  Stone 
well.  He  was  dignified,  tiresome,  conversa 
tional,  gentle  mannered  and,  I  think,  rather 
lonely.  By  driblets,  a  scrap  here  and  a  scrap 
there,  I  learned  something  about  his  private 
life.  He  came  from  the  extreme  eastern  end 
of  the  state.  He  belonged  to  an  old  family. 
His  grandfather  —  or  maybe  it  was  his  great- 
graijd-uncle  —  had  been  one  of  the  first  United 
States  senators  that  went  to  Washington  after 
our  state  was  admitted  into  the  Union.  He 
had  never  married.  He  had  no  business  or 
profession.  From  some  property  or  other  he 
drew  an  income,  small,  but  enough  to  keep  him 
in  a  sort  of  simple  and  genteel  poverty.  He 
belonged  to  the  best  club  in  town  and  the  most 
exclusive,  the  Shawnee  Club,  and  he  had  served 
four  years  in  the  Confederate  army.  That 
last  was  the  one  big  thing  in  his  life.  To  the 
major's  conceptions  everything  that  happened 
before  1861  had  been  of  a  preparatory  nature, 
leading  up  to  and  paving  the  way  for  the  main 


CUB     REPORTER     STORIES 

event;  and  what  had  happened  since  1865 
was  of  no  consequence,  except  in  so  far  as  it 
reflected  the  effects  of  the  Civil  War. 

Daily,  as  methodically  as  a  milkwagon  horse, 
he  covered  the  same  route.  First  he  sat  in 
the  reading  room  of  the  old  Gaunt  House, 
where  by  an  open  fire  in  winter  or  by  an  open 
window  in  summer  he  discussed  the  blunders 
of  Braxton  Bragg  and  similar  congenial  topics 
with  a  little  group  of  aging,  fading,  testy 
veterans.  On  his  way  to  the  Shawnee  Club 
he  would  come  by  the  Evening  Press  office 
and  stay  an  hour,  or  two  hours,  or  three  hours, 
to  go  away  finally  with  a  couple  of  favored 
exchanges  tucked  under  his  arm,  and  leave  us 
with  our  ears  still  dinned  and  tingling.  Once 
in  a  while  of  a  night,  passing  the  Gaunt  House 
on  my  way  to  the  boarding  house  where  I 
lived  —  for  four  dollars  a  week  —  I  would  see 
him  through  the  windows,  sometimes  sitting 
alone,  sometimes  with  one  of  his  cronies. 

Round  the  office  he  sometimes  bothered  us 
and  sometimes  he  interfered  with  our  work; 
but  mainly  all  the  men  on  the  staff  liked  him, 
I  think,  or  at  least  we  put  up  with  him.  In 
our  home  town  each  of  us  had  known  somebody 
very  much  like  him  —  there  used  to  be  at  least 
one  Major  Stone  in  every  community  in  the 
South,  although  most  of  them  are  dead  now, 
I  guess  —  so  we  all  could  understand  him. 
When  I  say  all  I  mean  all  but  Devore.  The 

major's  mere  presence  would  poison  Devore's 
__ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

whole  day  for  him.  The  major's  blaring  notes 
would  cross-cut  Devore's  nerves  as  with  a  dull 
and  haggling  saw.  He  —  Devore  I  mean  — 
disliked  the  major  with  a  dislike  almost  too 
deep  for  words.  It  had  got  to  be  an  obsession 
with  him. 

"You  fellows  that  were  born  down  here  have 
to  stand  for  him,"  he  said  once,  when  the 
major  had  stumped  out  on  his  short  legs  after 
an  unusually  long  visit.  "It's  part  of  the 
penalty  you  pay  for  belonging  in  this  country. 
But  I  don't  have  to  venerate  him  and  fuss  over 
him  and  listen  to  him.  I'm  a  Yankee,  thank 
the  Lord!"  Devore  came  from  Michigan  and 
had  worked  on  papers  in  Cleveland  and  Detroit 
before  he  drifted  South.  "Oh,  we've  got  his 
counterpart  up  my  way,"  he  went  on.  "Up 
there  he'd  be  a  pension-grabbing  old  kicker, 
ready  to  have  a  fit  any  time  anybody  wearing 
a  gray  uniform  got  within  ninety  miles  of  him, 
and  writing  red-hot  letters  of  protest  to  the 
newspapers  every  time  the  state  authorities 
sent  a  captured  battle  flag  back  down  South. 
Down  here  he's  a  pompous,  noisy  old  fraud,  too 
proud  to  work  for  a  living  —  or  too  lazy  — 
and  too  poor  to  count  for  anything  in  this  world. 
The  difference  is  that  up  in  my  country  we've 
squelched  the  breed  —  we  got  good  and  tired 
of  these  professional  Bloody  Shirt  wavers  a 
good  while  ago;  but  here  you  fuss  over  this 
man,  and  you'll  sit  round  and  pretend  to  listen 
while  he  drools  away  about  things  that  hap- 
[104] 


CUB     REPORTER     STORIES 

pened  before  any  one  of  you  was  born.  Do 
you  fellows  know  what  I've  found  out  about 
your  Major  Putnam  Stone?  He's  a  life  member 
of  the  Shawnee  Club  —  a  life  member,  mind 
you!  And  here  I've  been  living  in  this  town 
over  a  year,  and  nobody  ever  so  much  as 
invited  me  inside  its  front  door!" 

All  of  which  was,  perhaps,  true,  even  though 
Devore  had  an  unnecessarily  harsh  way  of 
stating  the  case;  the  part  about  the  Shawnee 
Club  was  true,  at  any  rate,  and  I  used  to  think 
it  possibly  had  something  to  do  with  Devore's 
feelings  for  Major  Stone.  Not  that  Devore 
gave  open  utterance  to  his  feelings  to  the 
major's  face.  To  the  major  he  was  always 
silently  polite,  with  a  little  edging  of  ice  on 
his  politeness;  he  saved  up  his  spleen  to  spew 
it  out  behind  the  old  fellow's  back.  Farther 
than  that  he  couldn't  well  afford  to  go"anyhow. 
The  Chief,  owner  of  the  paper  and  its  editor, 
was  the  major's  friend.  As  for  the  major 
himself,  he  seemed  never  to  notice  Devore's 
attitude.  For  a  fact,  I  believe  he  actually  felt 
a  sort  of  pity  for  Devore,  seeing  that  Devore 
had  been  born  in  the  North.  Not  to  have  been 
born  in  the  South  was,  from  the  major's  way  of 
looking  at  the  thing,  a  great  and  regrettable 
misfortune  for  which  the  victim  could  not  be 
held  responsible,  since  the  fault  lay  with  his 
parents  and  not  with  him.  By  way  of  a  suitable 
return  for  this,  Devore  spent  many  a  spare 

moment  thinking  up  grotesque  yet    wickedly 
__  _ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

appropriate  nicknames  for  the  major.  He 
called  him  Old  First  and  Second  Manassas 
and  Old  Hardee's  Tactics  and  Old  Valley  of 
Virginia.  He  called  him  an  old  bluffer  too. 

He  was  wrong  there,  though,  certainly. 
Though  the  major  talked  pretty  exclusively 
about  the  war,  I  took  notice  that  he  rarely 
talked  about  the  part  he  himself  had  played 
in  it.  Indeed,  he  rarely  discussed  anybody 
below  the  rank  of  brigadier.  The  errors  of 
Hood's  campaign  concerned  him  more  deeply 
than  the  personal  performances  of  any  indi 
vidual.  Campaigns  you  might  say  were  his 
specialty,  campaigns  and  strategy.  About  such 
things  as  these  he  could  talk  for  hours  —  and 
he  did. 

I've  known  other  men  —  plenty  of  them  — 
not  nearly  so  well  educated  as  the  major,  who 
could  tell  you  tales  of  the  war  that  would 
make  you  see  it  —  yes,  and  smell  it  too  —  the 
smoke  of  the  campfires,  the  unutterable  fatigue 
of  forced  marches  when  the  men,  with  their 
tongues  lolling  out  of  their  mouths  like  dogs, 
staggered  along,  panting  like  dogs;  the  bloody 
prints  of  unshod  feet  on  flinty,  frozen  clods; 
the  shock  and  fearful  joy  of  the  fighting;  the 
shamed  numbness  of  retreats;  artillery  horses, 
their  hides  all  blood-boltered  and  their  tails 
clubbed  and  clotted  with  mire,  lying  dead  with 
stiff  legs  between  overturned  guns;  dead  men 
piled  in  heaps  and  living  men  huddled  in 

panics  —  all  of  it.     But  when  the  major  talked 

- .         __ 


CUB     REPORTER     STORIES 

I  saw  only  some  serious-minded  officers,  in 
whiskers  of  an  obsolete  cut  and  queer-looking 
shirt  collars,  poring  over  maps  round  a  table 
in  a  farmhouse  parlor.  When  he  chewed  on 
the  cud  of  the  vanished  past  it  certainly  was 
mighty  dry  chewing. 

There  came  a  day,  a  few  weeks  after  I  went 
to  work  for  the  Evening  Press,  when  for  once 
anyway  the  major  didn't  seem  to  have  anything 
to  say.  It  was  in  the  middle  of  a  blistering, 
smothering  hot  forenoon  in  early  June,  muggy 
and  still  and  close,  when  a  fellow  breathing 
felt  as  though  he  had  his  nose  buried  in  layers 
of  damp  cotton  waste.  The  city  room  was  a 
place  fit  to  addle  eggs,  and  from  the  composing 
room  at  the  back  the  stenches  of  melting  metals 
and  stale  machine  oils  came  rolling  in  to  us  in 
nasty  waves.  With  his  face  glistening  through 
the  trickling  sweat,  the  major  came  in  about 
ten  o'clock,  fanning  himself  with  his  hat,  and 
when  he  spoke  his  greeting  the  booming  note 
seemed  all  melted  and  gone  out  of  his  voice. 
He  went  through  the  city  room  into  the  room 
behind  the  partition,  and  passing  through  a 
minute  later  I  saw  him  sitting  there  with  one 
of  Sidley's  exchanges  unfolded  across  his  knee, 
but  he  wasn't  reading  it.  Presently  I  saw  him 
climbing  laboriously  up  the  stairs  to  the  second 
floor  where  the  chief  had  his  office.  At  quitting 
time  that  afternoon  I  dropped  into  the  place 
on  the  corner  for  a  beer,  and  I  was  drinking  it, 
as  close  to  an  electric  fan  as  I  could  get,  when 
[107] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

Devore  came  in  and  made  for  where  I  was 
standing.  I  asked  him  to  have  something. 

"I'll  take  the  same,"  he  said  to  the  man 
behind  the  bar,  and  then  to  me  with  a  kind 
of  explosive  snap:  "By  George,  I'm  in  a  good 
mind  to  resign  this  rotten  job!"  That  didn't 
startle  me.  I  had  been  in  the  business  long 
enough  to  know  that  the  average  newspaper 
man  is  forever  threatening  to  resign.  Most 
of  them  —  to  hear  them  talk  —  are  always 
just  on  the  point  of  throwing  up  their  jobs 
and  buying  a  good-paying  country  weekly 
somewhere  and  taking  things  easy  for  the  rest 
of  their  lives,  or  else  they're  going  into  maga 
zine  work.  Only  they  hardly  ever  do  it.  So 
Devore's  threat  didn't  jar  me  much.  I'd 
heard  it  too  often. 

"What's  the  trouble?"  I  asked.  "Heat 
getting  on  your  nerves?" 

"No,  it's  not  the  heat,"  he  said  peevishly; 
"it's  worse  than  the  heat.  Do  you  know 
what's  happened?  The  chief  has  saddled  Old 
Signal  Corps  on  me.  Yes,  sir,  I've  got  to  take 
his  old  pet,  the  major,  on  the  city  staff.  It 
seems  he's  succeeded  in  losing  what  little 
property  he  had  —  the  chief  told  me  some  rig 
marole  about  sudden  financial  reverses  —  and 
now  he's  down  and  out.  So  I'm  elected.  I've 
got  to  take  him  on  as  a  reporter  —  a  cub 
reporter  sixty-odd  years  old,  mind  you,  who 
hasn't  heard  of  anything  worth  while  since 

Robert  E.  Lee  surrendered!" 
_ 


CUB     REPORTER     STORIES 

The  pathos  of  the  situation  —  if  you  could 
call  it  that  —  hit  me  with  a  jolt;  but  it  hadn't 
hit  Devore,  that  was  plain.  He  saw  only  the 
annoying  part  of  it. 

"What's  he  going  to  do?"  I  asked  —  "assign 
ments,  or  cover  a  route  like  the  district  men?" 

"Lord  knows,"  said  Devore.  "Because  the 
old  bore  knows  a  lot  of  big  people  in  this  town 
and  is  friendly  with  all  the  old-timers  in  the 
state,  the  chief  has  a  wild  delusion  that  he  can 
pick  up  a  lot  of  stuff  that  an  ordinary  reporter 
wouldn't  get.  Rats! 

"Come  on,  let's  take  another  beer,"  he  said, 
and  then  he  added:  "Well,  I'll  just  make 
you  two  predictions.  He'll  be  a  total  loss  as 
a  reporter  —  that's  one  prediction;  and  the 
other  is  that  he'll  have  a  hard  time  buying  his 
provender  and  his  toddies  over  at  the  Shawnee 
Club  on  the  salary  he'll  draw  down  from  the 
Evening  Press." 

Devore  was  not  such  a  very  great  city  editor, 
as  I  know  now  in  the  light  of  fuller  experience, 
but  I  must  say  that  as  a  prophet  he  was  fairly 
accurate.  The  major  did  have  a  hard  time 
living  on  his  salary  —  it  was  twelve  a  week, 
I  learned  —  and  as  a  reporter  he  certainly  was 
not  what  you  would  call  a  dazzling  success. 
He  came  on  for  duty  at  eight  the  next  morn 
ing,  the  same  as  the  rest  of  us,  and  sorry  as  I 
felt  for  him  I  had  to  laugh.  He  had  bought 
himself  a  leather-backed  notebook  as  big  as  a 
young  ledger,  just  as  a  green  kid  just  out  of 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

high  school  would  have  done,  and  he  had  a 
long,  new,  shiny,  freshly  sharpened  lead  pencil 
sticking  out  of  the  breast  pocket  of  his  coat. 
He  tried  to  come  in  smartly  with  a  businesslike 
air,  but  it  wouldn't  have  fooled  a  blind  man, 
because  he  was  as  nervous  as  a  debutante.  It 
struck  me  as  one  of  the  funniest  things  —  and 
one  of  the  most  pathetic  —  I  had  ever  seen. 

I'll  say  this  for  Devore  —  he  tried  out  the 
major  on  nearly  every  kind  of  job;  and  surely 
it  wasn't  Devore's  fault  that  the  major  failed 
on  every  single  one  of  them.  His  first  attempt 
was  as  typical  a  failure  as  any  of  them.  That 
first  morning  Devore  assigned  him  to  cover  a 
wedding  at  high  noon,  high  noon  being  the 
phrase  we  always  used  for  a  wedding  that  took 
place  round  twelve  o'clock  in  the  day.  The 
daughter  of  one  of  the  wealthiest  merchants  in 
the  town,  and  also  one  of  our  largest  advertisers, 
was  going  to  be  married  to  the  first  deputy 
cotillion  leader  of  the  German  Club,  or  some 
thing  of  that  nature.  Anyhow  the  groom  was 
what  is  known  as  prominent  in  society,  and  the 
chief  wanted  a  spread  made  of  it.  Devore  sent 
the  major  out  to  cover  the  wedding,  and  when 
he  came  back  told  him  to  write  about  half  a 
column. 

He  wrote  half  a  column  before  he  mentioned 
the  bride's  name.  He  started  off  with  an  eight- 
line  quotation  from  Walter  Scott's  Lady  of  the 
Lake,  and  then  he  went  into  a  long,  flowery 

dissertation  on  the  sacred  rite  or  ceremony  of 

_ _ 


CUB     REPORTER     STORIES 

matrimony,  proving  conclusively  and  beyond 
the  peradventure  of  a  doubt  that  it  was  handed 
down  to  us  from  remote  antiquity.  And  he 
forgot  altogether  to  tell  the  minister's  name, 
and  he  got  the  groom's  middle  initial  wrong  — 
he  was  the  kind  of  groom  who  would  make  a 
fuss  over  a  wrong  middle  initial,  too  —  and 
along  toward  the  end  of  his  story  he  devoted 
about  three  closely-written  pages  to  the  mili 
tary  history  of  the  young  woman's  father.  It 
seems  that  her  parent  had  served  with  distinc 
tion  as  colonel  of  a  North  Carolina  regiment. 
And  he  wound  up  with  a  fancy  flourish  and 
handed  it  in.  I  know  all  these  details  of  his 
story,  because  it  fell  to  me  to  rewrite  it. 

Devore  didn't  say  a  word  when  the  old  major 
reverently  laid  that  armload  of  copy  down  in 
front  of  him.  He  just  sat  and  waited  in  silence 
until  the  major  had  gone  out  to  get  a  bite  to 
eat,  and  then  he  undertook  to  edit  it.  But 
there  wasn't  any  way  to  edit  it,  except  to  throw 
it  away.  I  suppose  that  kind  of  literature  went 
very  well  indeed  back  along  about  1850;  I 
remember  having  read  such  accounts  in  the 
back  files  of  old  weeklies,  printed  before  the 
war.  But  we  were  getting  out  a  live,  snappy 
paper.  Devore  tried  to  pattern  the  local  side 
after  the  New  York  and  Chicago  models.  As 
yet  we  hadn't  reached  the  point  where  we  spoke 
of  any  white  woman  without  the  prefix  Mrs. 
or  Miss  before  her  name,  but  we  were  up-to- 

date  in  a  good  many  other  particulars.     Why, 
__ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

it  was  even  against  the  office  rule  to  run 
"beauty  and  chivalry"  into  a  story  when 
describing  a  mixed  assemblage  of  men  and 
women;  and  when  a  Southern  newspaper  bars 
out  that  ancient  and  honorable  standby  among 
phrases  it  is  a  sign  that  the  old  order  has 
changed.  - 

For  ten  minutes  or  so  Devore,  cursing  softly 
to  himself,  cut  and  chopped  and  gutted  his  way 
through  the  major's  introduction,  and  between 
slashing  strokes  made  a  war  map  of  the  Bal 
kans  in  his  scalp  with  his  blue  pencil.  Then 
he  lost  patience  altogether. 

"Here,"  he  said  to  me,  "you're  not  doing 
anything,  are  you?  Well,  take  this  awful 
bunch  of  mushy  slush  and  read  it  through,  and 
then  try  to  make  a  decent  half-column  story 
out  of  it.  And  rush  it  over  a  page  at  a  time, 
will  you?  We've  got  to  hustle  to  catch  the 
three  o'clock  edition  with  it." 

Long  before  three  o'clock  the  major  was  back 
in  the  shop,  waiting  for  the  first  run  of  papers 
to  come  off  the  press.  Furtively  I  watched  him 
as  he  hunted  through  the  .sticky  pages  to  find 
his  first  story.  I  guess  he  had  the  budding 
pride  of  authorship  in  him,  just  as  all  the  rest 
of  us  have  it  in  us.  But  he  didn't  find  his 
story,  he  found  mine.  He  didn't  say  anything, 
but  he  looked  crushed  and  forlorn  as  he  got  up 
and  went  away.  It  was  like  him  not  to  ask 
for  any  explanations,  and  it  was  like  Devore 
not  to  offer  him  any. 


CUB     REPORTER     STORIES 

So  it  went.  Even  if  he  had  grown  up  in  the 
business  I  doubt  whether  Major  Putnam  Stone 
would  ever  have  made  a  newspaper  man;  and 
now  he  was  too  far  along  in  life  to  pick  up  even 
the  rudiments  of  the  trade.  He  didn't  have 
any  more  idea  of  news  values  than  a  rabbit. 
He  had  the  most  amazing  faculty  for  over 
looking  what  was  vital  in  the  news,  but  he 
could  always  be  depended  upon  to  pick  out 
some  trivial  and  inconsequential  detail  and 
dress  it  up  with  about  half  a  yard  of  old-point 
lace  adjectives.  He  never  by  any  chance  used 
a  short  word  if  he  could  dig  up  a  long,  hard  one, 
and  he  never  seemed  to  be  able  to  start  a  story 
without  a  quotation  from  one  of  the  poets.  It 
never  was  a  modern  poet  either.  Excepting 
for  Sidney  Lanier  and  Father  Ryan,  apparently 
he  hadn't  heard  of  any  poet  worth  while  since 
Edgar  Allan  Poe  died.  And  everything  that 
happened  seemed  to  remind  him  —  at  great 
length  —  of  something  else  that  had  happened 
between  1861  and  1865.  When  it  came  to 
lugging  the  Civil  War  into  a  tale,  he  was  as 
bad  as  that  character  in  one  of  Dickens'  novels 
who  couldn't  keep  the  head  of  King  Charles 
the  First  out  of  his  literary  productions.  With 
that  reared-back,  flat-heeled,  stiff-spined  gait 
of  his,  he  would  go  rummaging  round  the 
hotels  and  the  Shawnee  Club,  meeting  all  sorts 
of  people  and  hearing  all  sorts  of  things  that 
a  real  reporter  would  have  snatched  at  like  a 
hungry  dog  snatching  at  a  T-bone,  and  then 
[US] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

he  would  remember  that  it  was  the  fortieth 
anniversary  of  the  Battle  of  Kenesaw  Moun 
tain,  or  something,  and,  forgetting  everything 
else,  would  come  bulging  and  bustling  back 
to  the  office,  all  worked  up  over  the  prospect 
of  writing  two  or  three  columns  about  that. 
He  just  simply  couldn't  get  the  viewpoint; 
yet  I  think  he  tried  hard  enough.  I  guess  the 
man  who  said  you  couldn't  teach  an  old  dog 
new  tricks  had  particular  reference  to  an  old 
war  dog. 

I  remember  mighty  well  one  incident  that 
illustrates  the  point  I  am  trying  to  make. 
We  had  a  Sunday  edition.  We  were  rather 
vain  of  our  Sunday  edition.  It  carried  a 
colored  comic  supplement  and  a  section  full 
of  special  features,  and  we  all  took  a  more  or 
less  righteous  pride  in  it  and  tried  hard  to  make 
it  alive  and  attractive.  We  didn't  always 
succeed,  but  we  tried  all  right.  One  Saturday 
night  we  put  the  Sunday  to  bed,  and  about  one 
o'clock,  when  the  last  form  was  locked,  three 
or  four  of  us  dropped  into  Tony's  place  at 
the  corner  for  a  bite  to  eat  and  a  drink.  We 
hadn't  been  there  very  long  when  in  came  the 
old  major,  and  at  my  invitation  he  joined  us 
at  one  of  Tony's  little  round  tables  at  the  back 
of  the  place.  As  a  general  thing  the  major 
didn't  patronize  Tony's.  I  had  never  heard 
him  say  so  —  probably  he  wouldn't  have  said 
it  for  fear  of  hurting  our  feelings  —  but  I 
somehow  had  gathered  the  impression  that  the 
[114] 


CUB     REPORTER     STORIES 

major  believed  a  gentleman,  if  he  drank  at  all, 
should  drink  at  his  club.  But  it  was  long  after 
midnight  now  and  the  Shawnee  Club  would 
be  closed.  Ike  Webb  spoke  up  presently. 

"It's  a  pity  we  couldn't  dig  up  the  governor 
tonight,"  he  said. 

The  governor  had  come  down  from  the  state 
capital  about  noon,  and  all  the  afternoon  and 
during  most  of  the  evening  Webb  had  been 
trying  to  find  him.  There  was  a  possibility 
of  a  big  story  in  the  governor  if  Webb  could 
have  found  him.  The  major,  who  had  been 
sitting  there  stirring  his  toddy  in  an  absent- 
minded  sort  of  way,  spoke  up  casually:  "I 
spent  an  hour  with  the  governor  tonight  — 
at  my  club.  In  fact,  I  supped  with  him  in 
one  of  the  private  dining  rooms."  We  looked 
up,  startled,  but  the  major  went  right  along. 
"Young  gentlemen,  it  may  interest  you  to 
know  that  every  time  I  see  our  worthy  gov 
ernor  I  am  struck  more  and  more  by  his 
resemblance  to  General  Leonidas  Polk,  as  that 
gallant  soldier  and  gentleman  looked  when  I 
last  saw  him " 

Devore,  who  had  been  sitting  next  to  the 
major,  with  his  shoulder  half  turned  from  the 
old  man,  swung  round  sharply  and  interrupted 
him. 

"Major,"  he  said,  with  a  thin  icy  stream  of 

sarcasm    trickling    through    his    words,    "did 

you  and  the  governor  by  any  remote  chance 

discuss    anything  so    brutally  new    and    fresh 

[TlFj 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

as  the  present  political  complications  in  this 
state?" 

"Oh,  yes,"  said  the  major  blandly.  "We 
discussed  them  quite  at  some  length  —  or  at 
least  the  governor  did.  Personally  I  do  not 
take  a  great  interest  in  these  matters,  not  so 
great  an  interest  as  I  should,  perhaps,  take. 
However,  I  did  feel  impelled  to  take  issue  with 
him  on  one  point.  Our  governor  is  an  honest 
gentleman  —  more  than  that,  he  was  a  brave 
soldier  —  but  I  fear  he  is  mistaken  in  some  of 
his  attitudes.  I  regard  him  as  being  badly 
advised.  For  example,  he  told  me  that  no 
longer  ago  than  this  afternoon  he  affixed  his 
official  signature  to  a  veto  of  Senator  Stick- 
ney's  measure  in  regard  to  the  warehouses  of 
our  state " 

As  Devore  jumped  up  he  overturned  the 
major's  toddy  right  in  the  major's  lap.  He 
didn't  stop  to  beg  pardon,  though;  in  fact, 
none  of  us  stopped.  But  at  the  door  I  threw 
one  glance  backward  over  my  shoulder.  The 
major! was  still  sitting  reared  back  in  his  chair, 
with  his  wasted  toddy  seeping  all  down  the 
front  of  his  billowy  shirt,  viewing  our  vanish 
ing  figures  with  amazement  and  a  mild  reproof 
in  his  eyes.  In  the  one  quick  glance  that  I 
took  I  translated  his  expression  to  mean 
something  like  this: 

"Good  Heavens,  is  this  any  way  for  a  party 
of  gentlemen  to  break  up!  This  could  never 

happen  at  a  gentlemen's  club." 
_ 


CUB     REPORTER     STORIES 

It  was  a  foot-race  back  to  the  office,  and 
Devore,  who  had  the  start,  won  by  a  short 
length.  Luckily  the  distance  was  short,  not 
quite  half  a  block,  and  the  presses  hadn't 
started  yet.  Working  like  the  crew  of  a  sink 
ing  ship,  we  snatched  the  first  page  form  back 
off  the  steam  table  and  pried  it  open  and 
gouged  a  double  handful  of  hot  slugs  out  of 
the  last  column  —  Devore  blistered  his  fingers 
doing  it.  A  couple  of  linotype  operators  who 
were  on  the  late  trick  threw  together  the  stick 
or  two  of  copy  that  Webb  and  I  scribbled  off 
a  line  at  a  time.  And  while  we  were  doing  this 
Devore  framed  a  triple-deck,  black-face  head. 
So  we  missed  only  one  mail. 

The  first  page  had  a  ragged,  sloppy  look,  but 
anyway  we  were  saved  from  being  scooped  to 
death  on  the  most  important  story  of  the  year. 
The  vetoing  of  the  Stickney  Bill  vitally  affected 
the  tobacco  interests,  and  they  were  the  biggest 
interests  in  the  state,  and  half  the  people  of 
the  state  had  been  thinking  about  nothing  else 
and  talking  about  nothing  else  for  two  months 
—  ever  since  the  extra  session  of  the  legislature 
started.  It  was  well  for  us  too  that  we  did 
save  our  faces,  because  the  opposition  sheet 
had  managed  to  find  the  governor  —  he  was 
stopping  for  the  night  at  the  house  of  a  friend 
out  in  the  suburbs  —  and  over  the  telephone 
at  a  late  hour  he  had  announced  his  decision 
to  them.  But  by  Monday  morning  the  major 
seemed  to  have  forgotten  the  whole  thing.  I 
[U7] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

think  he  had  even  forgiven  Devore  for  spilling 
his  toddy  and  not  stopping  to  apologize. 

As  for  Devore,  he  didn't  say  a  word  to  the 
major — what  would  have  been  the  use?  To 
Devore's  credit  also  I  will  say  that  he  didn't 
run  to  the  chief,  bearing  complaints  of  the 
major's  hopeless  incompetency.  He  kept  his 
tongue  between  his  teeth  and  his  teeth  locked; 
and  that  must  have  been  hard  on  Devore,  for  he 
was  a  flickery,  high-tempered  man,  and  nervous 
as  a  cat  besides.  To  my  knowledge,  the  only 
time  he  ever  broke  out  was  when  we  teetotally 
missed  the  Castleton  divorce  story.  So  far  as 
the  major's  part  in  it  was  concerned,  it  was 
the  Stickney  veto  story  all  over  again,  with 
variations.  The  Castletons  were  almost  the 
richest  people  in  town,  and  socially  they  stood 
way  up.  That  made  the  scandal  that  had  been 
brewing  and  steeping  and  simmering  for  months 
all  the  bigger  when  finally  it  came  to  a  boil. 
When  young  Buford  Castleton  got  his  eyes 
open  and  became  aware  of  what  everybody  else 
had  known  for  a  year  or  more,  and  when  the 
rival  evening  paper  came  out  in  its  last  edition 
with  the  full  particulars,  we,  over  in  the  Even 
ing  Press  shop,  were  plastered  with  shame,  for 
we  didn't  have  a  line  of  it. 

A  stranger  dropping  in  just  about  that  time 
would  have  been  justified  in  thinking  there 
was  a  corpse  laid  out  in  the  plant  somewhere, 
and  that  all  the  members  of  the  city  staff 

were   sitting  up   with   the  remains.     As   luck 
__ 


CUB     REPORTER     STORIES 

would  have  it,  it  wasn't  a  stranger  that  dropped 
in  on  our  grand  lodge  of  sorrow.  It  was 
Major  Putnam  Stone,  and  as  he  entered  the 
door  he  caught  the  tag  end  of  what  one  of  us 
was  saying. 

"I  gather,"  he  said  in  that  large  round 
voice  of  his,  "that  you  young  gentlemen  are 
discussing  the  unhappy  affair  which,  I  note,  is 
mentioned  with  such  signally  poor  taste  in  the 
columns  of  our  sensational  contemporary.  I 
may  state  that  I  knew  of  this  contemplated 
divorce  action  yesterday.  Mr.  Buford  Castle- 
ton,  Senior,  was  my  informant." 

"  What ! "  Devore  almost  yelled  it.  He  had 
the  love  of  a  true  city  editor  for  his  paper,  and 
the  love  of  a  mother  for  her  child  or  a  miser 
for  his  gold  is  no  greater  love  than  that,  let  me 
tell  you.  "You  knew  about  this  thing  here?" 
He  beat  with  two  fingers  that  danced  like  the 
prongs  of  a  tuning  fork  on  the  paper  spread 
out  in  front  of  him.  "  You  knew  it  yesterday?  " 

"Certainly,"  said  the  major.  "The  elder 
Mr.  Castleton  bared  the  truly  distressing 
details  to  me  at  the  Shawnee  Club." 

"In  confidence  though  —  he  told  you  about 
it  in  confidence,  didn't  he,  major?"  said  Ike 
Webb,  trying  to  save  the  old  fellow. 

But  the  major  besottedly  wouldn't  be  saved. 

"Absolutely  not,"  he  said.  "There  were 
several  of  us  present,  at  least  three  other 
gentlemen  whose  names  I  cannot  now  recall. 

Mr.  Castleton  made  the  disclosure  as  though 
_ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

he  wished  it  to  be  known  among  his  friends 
and  his  son's  friends.  It  was  quite  evident  to 
all  of  us  that  he  was  entirely  out  of  sympathy 
with  the  lady  who  is  his  daughter-in-law." 

Devore  forced  himself  to  be  calm.  It  was 
almost  as  though  he  sat  on  himself  to  hold 
himself  down  in  his  chair;  but  when  he  spoke 
his  voice  ran  up  and  down  the  scales  quiveringly. 

"Major,"  he  said,  "don't  you  think  it  would 
be  a  good  idea  if  you  would  admit  that  the 
Southern  Confederacy  was  defeated,  and  turned 
your  attention  to  a  few  things  that  have  oc 
curred  subsequently?  Why  didn't  you  write 
this  story?  Why  didn't  you  tell  me,  so  that  I 

could  write  it?  Why  didn't Oh,  what's 

the  use!" 

The  major  straightened  himself  up. 

"Sir,"  he  said,  "allow  me  to  correct  you  in 
regard  to  a  plain  misstatement  of  fact.  Sir, 
the  Southern  Confederacy  was  never  defeated. 
It  ceased  to  exist  as  a  nation  because  we  were 
exhausted  —  because  our  devastated  country 
was  exhausted.  Another  thing,  sir,  I  am 
employed  upon  this  paper,  I  gainsay  you,  as 
a  reporter,  not  as  a  scandal  monger.  I  would 
be  the  last  to  give  circulation  in  the  public 
prints  to  another  gentleman's  domestic  unhap- 
piness.  I  regard  it  as  highly  improper  that  a 
gentleman's  private  affairs  should  be  aired  in 
a  newspaper  under  any  circumstances." 

And  with  that  he  bowed  and  turned  on  his 
heel  and  went  out,  leaving  Devore  shaking 


CUB     REPORTER     STORIES 

all  over  with  the  superhuman  task  of  trying 
to  hold  himself  in.  About  ten  minutes  later, 
when  I  came  out  bound  for  my  boarding  house, 
the  major  was  standing  at  the  front  door.  He 
looped  one  of  his  absurdly  small  fingers  into 
one  of  my  buttonholes. 

"Our  city  editor  means  well,  no  doubt," 
he  said,  "but  he  doesn't  understand,  he  doesn't 
appreciate  our  conceptions  of  these  matters. 
He  was  born  on  the  other  side  of  the  river, 
you  know,"  he  said  as  though  that  explained 
everything.  Then  his  tone  changed  and  anxiety 
crept  into  it.  "Do  you  think  that  I  went  too 
far?  Do  you  think  I  ought  to  return  to  him 
and  apologize  to  him  for  the  somewhat  hasty 
and  abrupt  manner  of  speech  I  used  just  now?" 

I  told  him  no  —  I  didn't  know  what  might 
happen  if  he  went  back  in  there  then  —  and 
I  persuaded  him  that  Devore  didn't  expect 
any  apology;  and  with  that  he  seemed  better 
satisfied  and  walked  off.  As  I  stood  there 
watching  him,  his  stiff  old  back  growing  smaller 
as  he  went  away  from  me,  I  didn't  know  which 
I  blamed  the  more,  Devore  for  his  malignant, 
cold  disdain  of  the  major,  or  the  major  for  his 
blatant  stupidity.  And  right  then  and  there, 
all  of  a  sudden,  there  came  to  me  an  under 
standing  of  a  thing  that  had  been  puzzling  me 
all  these  weeks.  Often  I  had  wondered  how 
the  major  had  endured  Devore's  contempt. 
I  had  decided  in  my  own  mind  that  he  must  be 
blind  to  it,  else  he  would  have  shown  resent- 

~ nil] " 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

ment.  But  now  I  knew  the  answer.  The 
major  wasn't  blind,  he  was  afraid;  as  the  saying 
goes,  he  was  afraid  of  his  job.  He  needed  it; 
he  needed  the  little  scrap  of  money  it  brought 
him  every  Saturday  night.  That  was  it,  I 
knew  now. 

Knowing  it  made  me  sorrier  than  ever  for 
the  old  man.  Dimly  I  began  to  realize,  I 
think,  what  his  own  mental  attitude  toward 
his  position  must  be.  Here  he  was,  a  mere 
cub  reporter  —  and  a  remarkably  bad  one,  a 
proven  failure  —  skirmishing  round  for  small, 
inconsequential  items,  running  errands  really, 
at  an  age  when  most  of  the  men  he  knew  were 
getting  ready  to  retire  from  business.  Yet 
he  didn't  dare  quit.  He  didn't  dare  even  to 
rebel  against  the  slights  of  the  man  over  him, 
because  he  needed  that  twelve  dollars  a  week. 
It  was  all,  no  doubt,  that  stood  between  him 
and  actual  want.  His  pride  was  bleeding  to 
death  internally.  On  top  of  all  that  he  was 
being  forced  into  a  readjustment  of  his  whole 
scheme  of  things,  at  a  time  of  life  when  its 
ordered  routine  was  almost  as  much  a  part 
of  him  as  his  hands  and  feet.  As  I  figured 
it,  he  had  long  before  adjusted  his  life  to 
his  income,  cunningly  fitting  in  certain  small 
luxuries  and  all  the  small  comforts;  and  now 
this  income  was  cut  to  a  third  or  a  quarter 
perhaps  of  its  former  dimensions.  It  seemed 
a  pretty  hard  thing  for  the  major.  It  was 

fierce. 

__ 


CUB     REPORTER     STORIES 

Perhaps  my  vision  was  clouded  by  my  sym 
pathy,  but  I  thought  Major  Stone  aged  visibly 
that  summer.  Maybe  you  have  noticed  how 
it  is  with  men  who  have  gone  along,  hale  and 
stanch,  until  they  reach  a  certain  age.  When 
they  do  start  to  break  they  break  fast.  He 
lost  some  of  his  flesh  and  most  of  his  rosi- 
ness.  The  skin  on  his  face  loosened  a  little  and 
became  a  tallowy  yellowish-red,  somewhat  like 
a  winter-killed  apple. 

His  wardrobe  suffered.  One  day  one  of  his 
short  little  shoes  was  split  across  the  top  just 
back  of  the  toe  cap,  and  the  next  morning 
it  was  patched.  Pretty  soon  the  other  shoe 
followed  suit  —  first  a  crack  in  the  leather, 
then  a  clumsy  patch  over  the  crack.  He  wore 
his  black  slouch  hat  until  it  was  as  green  in 
spots  as  a  gage  plum;  and  late  in  August  he 
supplanted  it  with  one  of  those  cheap,  varnished 
brown-straw  hats  that  cost  about  thirty-five 
cents  apiece  and  look  it. 

His  linen  must  have  been  one  of  his  small 
extravagances.  Those  majestically  collared 
garments  with  the  tremendous  plaited  bosoms 
and  the  hand  worked  eyelets,  where  the  three 
big  flat  gold  studs  went  in,  never  came  ready 
made  from  any  shop.  They  must  have  been 
built  to  his  measure  and  his  order.  Now 
he  wore  them  until  there  were  gaped  places 
between  the  plaits  where  the  fine,  fragile  linen 
had  ripped  lengthwise,  and  the  collars  were 
frayed  down  and  broken  across  and  caved  in 
[123] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

limply.  Finally  he  gave  them  up  too,  and 
one  morning  came  to  work  wearing  a  flimsy, 
sleazy,  negligee  shirt.  I  reckon  you  know  the 
kind  of  shirt  I  mean  —  always  it  fits  badly, 
and  the  sleeves  are  always  short  and  the  bosom 
is  skimpy,  and  the  color  design  is  like  bad  wall 
paper.  After  his  old  full-bosomed  grandeur 
this  shirt,  with  a  ten-cent  collar  buttoned  on 
to  it  and  overriding  the  neckband,  and  gaping 
away  in  the  front  so  that  the  major's  throat 
showed,  seemed  to  typify  more  than  any 
thing  else  the  days  upon  which  he  had  fallen. 
About  this  time  I  thought  his  voice  took 
on  a  changed  tone  permanently.  It  was  still 
hollow,  but  it  no  longer  rang. 

A  good  many  men  similarly  placed  would 
have  taken  to  drink,  but  Major  Putnam  Stone 
plainly  was  never  born  to  be  a  drunkard  and 
hard  times  couldn't  make  one  of  him.  With 
a  sort  of  gentle,  stupid  persistence  he  hung 
fast  to  his  poor  job,  blundering  through  some 
way,  struggling  constantly  to  learn  the  first 
easy  tricks  of  the  trade  —  the  a,  b,  c's  of  it 
—  and  never  succeeding.  He  still  lugged  the 
classical  poets  and  the  war  into  every  story 
he  tried  to  write,  and  day  after  day  Devore 
maintained  his  policy  of  eloquent  brutal  silence, 
refusing  dumbly  to  accept  the  major's  clumsy 
placating  attempts  to  get  upon  a  better  foot 
ing  with  him.  After  that  once  he  had  never 
attempted  to  scold  the  old  man,  but  he  would 
watch  the  major  pottering  round  the  city  room, 


CUB     REPORTER     STORIES 

and  he  would  chew  on  his  under  lip  and  viciously 
lance  his  scalp  with  his  pencil  point. 

Well,  aside  from  the  major,  Devore  had  his 
troubles  that  summer.  That  was  the  summer 
of  the  biggest,  bitterest  campaign  that  the 
state  had  seen,  so  old-timers  said,  since  Breckin- 
ridge  ran  against  Douglas  and  both  of  them 
against  Lincoln.  If  you  have  ever  lived  in  the 
South,  probably  you  know  something  of  politi 
cal  fights  that  will  divide  a  state  into  two 
armed  camps,  getting  hotter  and  hotter  until 
old  slumbering  animosities  come  crawling  out 
into  the  open,  like  poison  snakes  from  under 
a  rock,  and  new  lively  ones  hatch  from  the 
shell  every  hour  or  so  in  a  multiplying  adder 
brood. 

This  was  like  that,  only  worse.  Stripped  of 
a  lot  of  embroidery  in  the  shape  of  side  issues 
and  local  complications,  it  resolved  itself  in  a 
last-ditch,  last-stand,  back-to-the-wall  fight  of 
the  old  regime  of  the  party  against  the  new. 
On  one  side  were  the  oldsters,  bearers  of  famous 
names  some  of  them,  who  had  learned  politics 
as  a  trade  and  followed  it  as  a  profession. 
Almost  to  a  man  they  were  professional  office 
holders,  professional  handshakers,  professional 
silver  tongues.  And  against  them  were  pitted 
a  greedy,  hungry  group  of  younger  men,  less 
showy  perhaps  in  their  persons,  less  picturesque 
in  their  manner  of  speech,  but  filled  each  one 
with  a  great  yearning  for  office  and  power; 
and  they  brought  to  the  aid  of  their  vaulting 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

ambitions  a  new  and  a  faultlessly  running 
machine.  From  the  outset  the  Evening  Press 
had  championed  the  cause  of  the  old  crowd 
—  the  state-house  ring  as  the  enemy  called  it, 
when  they  didn't  call  it  something  worse.  We 
championed  it  not  as  a  Northern  or  an  Eastern 
paper  might,  in  a  sedate,  half-hearted  way,  but 
fiercely  and  wholly  and  blindly  —  so  blindly 
that  we  could  see  nothing  in  our  own  faction 
but  what  was  good  and  high  and  pure,  nothing 
in  the  other  but  what  was  smutted  with  evil 
intent.  In  daily  double-leaded  editorial  col 
umns  the  chief  preached  a  Holy  War,  and  in 
the  local  pages  we  fought  the  foe  tooth  and 
nail,  biting  and  gouging  and  clawing,  and  they 
gouged  and  clawed  back  at  us  like  catamounts. 
That  was  where  the  hard  work  fell  upon  Devore. 
He  had  to  keep  half  his  scanty  staff  working 
on  politics  while  the  other  half  tried  to  cover 
the  run  of  the  news. 

If  I  live  to  be  a  thousand  years  old  I  am 
not  going  to  forget  the  state  convention  that 
began  at  two  o'clock  that  muggy  September 
afternoon  at  Lyric  Hall  up  on  Washington 
Street  in  the  old  part  of  the  town.  Once  upon 
a  time,  twenty  or  thirty  years  before,  Lyric 
Hall  had  been  the  biggest  theater  in  town. 
The  stage  was  still  there  and  the  boxes,  and 
at  the  back  there  were  miles  —  they  seemed 
miles  anyway  —  of  ancient,  crumbling,  dauby 
scenery  stacked  up  and  smelling  of  age  and 
decay.  Booth  and  Barrett  had  played  there, 
~~  ~~  ~~  [126] 


CUB     REPORTER     STORIES 

and  Fanny  Davenport  and  Billy  Florence. 
Now,  having  fallen  from  its  high  estate,  it 
served  altered  purposes  —  conventions  were 
held  at  Lyric  Hall  and  cheap  masquerade  balls 
and  the  like. 

The  press  tables  that  had  been  provided 
were  not,  strictly  speaking,  press  tables  at 
all.  They  were  ordinary  unpainted  kitchen 
tables,  ranged  two  on  one  side  and  two  on  the 
other  side  at  the  front  of  the  stage,  close  up 
to  the  old  gas-tipped  footlights;  and  when  we 
came  in  by  the  back  way  that  afternoon  and 
found  our  appointed  places  I  was  struck  by 
certain  sinister  facts.  Usually  women  flocked 
to  a  state  convention.  By  rights  there  should 
have  been  ladies  in  the  boxes  and  in  the  balcony. 
Now  there  wasn't  a  woman  in  sight  anywhere, 
only  men,  row  after  row  of  them.  And  there 
wasn't  any  cheering,  or  mighty  little  of  it. 
When  I  tell  you  the  band  played  Dixie  all  the 
way  through  with  only  a  stray  whoop  now  and 
then,  you  will  understand  better  the  temper 
of  that  crowd. 

The  situation,  you  see,  was  like  this:  One 
side  had  carried  the  mountain  end  of  the 
state;  the  other  had  carried  the  lowlands. 
One  side  had  swept  the  city;  that  meant  a 
solid  block  of  more  than  a  hundred  delegates. 
The  other  side  had  won  the  small  towns  and 
the  inland  counties.  So  it  stood  lowlander 
against  highlander,  city  man  against  country 
man,  and  the  bitter  waters  of  those  ancient 

[m] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

feuds  have  their  wellsprings  back  a  thousand 
years  in  history,  they  tell  me.  One  side  led 
slenderly  on  instructed  vote.  The  other  side 
had  enough  contesting  delegations  on  hand  to 
upset  the  result  if  these  contestants  or  any 
considerable  proportion  of  them  should  be 
recognized  in  the  preliminary  organization. 

One  side  held  a  majority  of  the  delegates  who 
sat  upon  the  floor;  the  other  side  had  packed 
the  balcony  and  the  aisles  and  the  corners  with 
its  armed  partizans.  One  side  was  in  the 
saddle  and  determined;  the  other  afoot  and 
grimly  desperate.  And  it  was  our  side,  as  I 
shall  call  it,  meaning  by  that  the  state-house 
ring,  that  for  the  moment  had  the  whiphand; 
and  it  was  the  other  side,  led  in  person  by  State 
Senator  Stickney,  god  of  the  new  machine, 
that  stood  ready  to  wade  hip  deep  through 
trouble  to  unhorse  us. 

Just  below  me,  stretching  across  the  hall 
from  side  to  side  in  favored  front  places,  sat 
the  city  delegates  —  Stickney  men  all  of  them. 
And  as  my  eye  swept  the  curved  double  row 
of  faces  it  seemed  to  me  I  saw  there  every  man 
in  town  with  a  reputation  as  a  gun-fighter  or 
a  knife-fighter  or  a  fist-fighter;  and  every  one 
of  them  wore,  pinning  his  delegate's  badge  to 
his  breast,  a  Stickney  button  that  was  round 
and  bright  red,  like  a  clot  of  blood  on  his  shirt 
front. 

They  made  a  contrast,  these  half-moon 
lines  of  blocky  men,  to  the  lank,  slouch-hatted, 


CUB     REPORTER     STORIES 

low-collared  country  delegates — farmers,  school 
teachers,  country  doctors  and  country  lawyers 
—  who  filled  the  seats  behind  them  and  on 
beyond  them.  To  the  one  group  politics  was 
a  business  in  which  there  was  money  to  be 
made  and  excitement  to  be  had;  to  the  other 
group  it  was  a  passion,  veritably  a  sacredly 
high  and  serious  thing,  which  they  took  as 
they  did  their  religion,  with  a  solemn,  intol 
erant,  Calvinistic  sincerity.  There  was  one 
thing,  though,  they  all  shared  in  common. 
Whether  a  man's  coat  was  of  black  alpaca  or 
striped  flannel,  the  right-hand  pocket  sagged 
under  the  weight  of  unseen  ironmongery;  or  if 
the  coat  pocket  didn't  sag  there  was  a  bulging 
clump  back  under  the  skirts  on  the  right  hip. 
For  all  the  heat,  hardly  a  man  there  was  in 
his  shirtsleeves;  and  it  would  have  been  funny 
to  watch  how  carefully  this  man  or  that  eased 
himself  down  into  his  seat,  favoring  his  flanks 
against  the  pressure  of  his  hardware  —  that  is 
to  say,  it  would  have  been  funny  if  it  all  hadn't 
been  so  deadly  earnest. 

You  could  fairly  smell  trouble  cooking  in 
that  hall.  In  any  corner  almost  there  were 
the  potential  makings  of  half  a  dozen  prominent 
funerals.  There  was  scarce  a  man,  I  judged, 
but  nursed  a  private  grudge  against  some 
other  man;  and  then  besides  these  there  was 
the  big  issue  itself,  which  had  split  the  state 
apart  lengthwise  as  a  butcher's  cleaver  splits 
a  joint.  Looking  out  over  that  convention, 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

you  could  read  danger  spelled  out  everywhere, 
in  everything,  as  plain  as  print. 

I  was  where  I  could  read  it  with  particular 
and  uncomfortable  distinctness,  too,  for  I  had 
the  second  place  at  the  table  that  had  been 
assigned  to  the  Evening  Press  crew.  There 
were  four  of  us  in  all  —  Devore,  who  had 
elected  to  be  in  direct  charge  of  the  detail; 
Ike  Webb,  our  star  man,  who  was  to  handle 
the  main  story;  I  who  was  to  write  the  running 
account  —  and,  fourthly  and  lastly,  Major 
Putnam  Stone.  The  major  hadn't  been  in 
cluded  in  the  assignment  originally,  but  little 
Pinky  Gilfoil  had  turned  up  sick  that  morning, 
and  the  chief  decided  the  major  should  come 
along  with  us  in  Gilf oil's  place.  The  chief 
had  a  deluded  notion  that  the  major  could 
circulate  on  a  roving  commission  and  pick  up 
spicy  scraps  of  gossip.  But  here,  for  this  once 
anyway,  was  a  convention  wherein  there  were 
no  spicy  bits  of  gossip  to  be  picked  up  —  curse 
words,  yes,  and  cold-chilled  fighting  words, 
but  not  gossip  —  everything  focused  and  was 
summed  up  in  the  one  main  point:  Should 
the  majority  rule  the  machine  or  should  the 
machine  rule  the  majority?  So  the  major  sat 
there  at  the  far  inside  corner  of  the  table  doing 
nothing  at  all  —  Devore  saw  to  that  —  and 
was  rather  in  the  way.  For  the  time  I  forgot 
all  about  him. 

The  clash  wasn't  long  in  coming.     It  came 

on  the  first  roll  call  of  the  counties.     Later 

_.          __      -       _ 


CUB     REPORTER     STORIES 

we  found  out  that  the  Stickney  forces  had  been 
counting,  all  along,  on  throwing  the  convention 
into  a  disorder  of  such  proportions  as  to  force 
an  adjournment,  trusting  then  to  their  acknowl 
edged  superiority  at  organization  to  win  some 
strong  strategic  advantage  in  the  intervening 
gap  of  time.  Failing  there  they  meant  to  raise 
a  cry  of  unfairness  and  walk  out.  That  then 
was  their  program  —  first  the  riot  and  then, 
as  a  last  resort,  the  bolt.  But  they  had  men 
in  their  ranks,  high-tempered  men  who,  like 
so  many  skittish  colts,  wouldn't  stand,  without 
hitching.  The  signals  crossed  and  the  thunder 
cracked  across  that  calm-before-the-storm  situ 
ation  before  there  was  proper  color  of  excuse 
either  for  attack  or  for  retreat. 

It  came  with  scarcely  any  warning  at  all. 
Old  Judge  Marcellus  Barbee,  the  state  chair 
man,  called  the  convention  to  order,  he  stand 
ing  at  a  little  table  in  the  center  of  the  stage. 
Although  counted  as  our  man,  the  judge  was 
of  such  uncertain  fiber  as  to  render  it  doubtful 
whose  man  he  really  was.  He  was  a  kindly, 
wind-blown  old  gentleman,  who  very  much 
against  his  will  had  been  drawn  unawares,  as  it 
were,  into  the  middle  of  this  fight,  and  he  was 
bewildered  by  it  all  —  and  not  only  bewil 
dered  but  unhappy  and  frightened.  His  gavel 
seemed  to  quaver  its  raps  out  timorously. 

A  pastor  of  one  of  the  churches,  a  reverend 
man  with  a  bleak,  worried  face,  prayed  the 
Good  Lord  that  peace  and  good-will  and  wise 

[isi] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

counsel  might  rule  these  deliberations,  and  then 
fled  away  as  though  fearing  the  mocking  echoes 
of  his  own  Amen.  Summoning  his  skulking 
voice  out  of  his  lower  throat,  Judge  Barbee 
bade  the  secretary  of  the  state  committee 
call  the  counties.  The  secretary  got  as  far 
as  Blanton,  the  third  county  alphabetically 
down  the  list.  And  Blanton  was  one  of  the 
contested  counties.  So  up  rose  two  rival 
chairmen  of  delegations,  each  waving  aloft 
his  credentials,  each  demanding  the  right  to 
cast  the  vote  of  free  and  sovereign  Blanton, 
each  shaking  a  clenched  fist  at  the  other.  Up 
got  the  rival  delegations  from  Blanton.  Up 
got  everybody.  Judge  Barbee,  with  a  gesture, 
recognized  the  rights  of  the  anti-Stickney  dele 
gation.  Jeers  and  yells  broke  out,  spattering 
forth  like  a  skirmish  fire,  then  almost  instantly 
were  merged  into  a  vast,  ominous  roar.  Chairs 
began  to  overturn.  Not  twenty  feet  from  me 
the  clattering  of  the  chairman's  gavel,  as  he 
vainly  beat  for  order,  sounded  like  the  clicking 
of  a  telegraph  instrument  in  a  cyclone. 

I  saw  the  sergeant-at-arms  —  who  was  our 
man  too  —  start  down  the  middle  aisle  and 
saw  him  trip  over  a  hostile  leg  and  stumble 
and  fall,  and  I  saw  a  big  mountaineer  drop 
right  on  top  of  him,  pinning  him  flat  to  the 
floor.  I  saw  the  musicians  inside  the  orchestra 
rail,  almost  under  my  feet,  scuttling  away  in 
two  directions  like  a  divided  covey  of  gorgeous 
blue  and  red  birds.  I  saw  the  snare  drummer, 


CUB     REPORTER     STORIES 

a  little  round  German,  put  his  foot  through 
the  skin  roof  of  his  own  drum.  I  saw  Judge 
Barbee  overturn  the  white  china  pitcher  of  ice 
water  that  sweated  on  the  table  at  his  elbow, 
and  as  the  cold  stream  of  its  contents  spattered 
down  the  legs  of  his  trousers  saw  him  staring 
downward,  contemplating  his  drenched  limbs 
as  though  that  mattered  greatly. 

All  in  a  flash  I  saw  these  things,  and  in  that 
same  flash  I  saw,  taking  shape  and  impulse, 
a  groundswell  of  men,  all  wearing  red  buttons, 
rolling  toward  the  stage,  with  the  picked  bad 
men  of  the  city  wards  for  its  crest;  and  out 
of  the  tail  of  my  eye  I  saw  too,  stealing  out 
from  the  rear  of  the  stage,  a  small,  compact 
wedge  of  men  wearing  those  same  red  buttons; 
and  the  prow  of  the  wedge  was  Fighting  Dave 
Dancy,  the  official  bad  man  of  a  bad  county, 
a  man  who  packed  a  gun  on  each  hip  and  carried 
a  dirk  knife  down  the  back  of  his  neck;  a  man 
who  would  shoot  you  at  the  drop  of  a  hat  and 
provide  the  hat  himself  —  or  at  least  so  it  was 
said  of  him. 

And  I  realized  that  the  enemy,  coming  by 
concerted  agreement  from  front  and  rear  at 
once,  had  nipped  those  of  us  who  were  upon 
the  stage  as  between  two  closing  walls,  and 
I  was  exceedingly  unhappy  to  be  there.  I 
ducked  my  head  low,  waiting  for  the  shooting 
to  begin.  Afterward  we  figured  it  out  that 
nobody  fired  the  first  shot  because  everybody 
knew  the  first  shot  would  mean  a  massacre, 
__  [133] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

where  likely  enough  a  man  would  kill  more 
friends  than  foes. 

What  happened  now  in  the  space  of  the  next 
few  seconds  I  saw  with  particular  clarity  of 
vision,  because  it  happened  right  alongside  me 
and  in  part  right  over  me.  I  recall  in  especial 
Mink  Satterlee.  Mink  Satterlee  was  one  of 
the  worst  men  in  town,  and  he  ran  the  worst 
saloon  and  prevailed  mightily  in  ward  politics. 
He  had  been  sitting  just  below  our  table  in  the 
front  row  of  seats.  He  was  a  big-bodied  man, 
fat-necked,  but  this  day  he  showed  himself 
quick  on  his  feet  as  any  toe-dancer.  Leading 
his  own  forces  by  a  length,  he  vaulted  the 
orchestra  rail  and  lit  lightly  where  a  scared 
oboe  player  had  been  squatted  a  moment  be 
fore;  Mink  breasted  the  gutterlike  edging  of 
the  footlights  and  leaped  upward,  teetering  a 
moment  in  space.  One  of  his  hands  grabbed 
out  for  a  purchase  and  closed  on  the  leg  of 
our  table  and  jerked  it  almost  from  under  us. 

At  that  Devore  either  lost  his  head  or  else 
indignation  made  him  reckless.  Still  half 
sitting,  he  kicked  out  at  the  wriggling  bulk 
at  his  feet,  and  the  toe  of  his  shoe  took  Mink 
Satterlee  in  his  chest.  It  was  a  puny  enough 
kick;  it  didn't  even  shake  Mink  Satterlee 
loose  from  where  he  clung.  He  gave  a  bellow 
and  heaved  himself  up  on  the  stage  and,  before 
any  of  us  could  move,  grabbed  Devore  by  the 
throat  with  his  left  hand  and  jammed  him 

back,  face  upward,  on  the  table  until  I  thought 
_ 


CUB     REPORTER     STORIES 

Devore's  spine  would  crack.  His  right  hand 
shot  into  his  coat  pocket,  then,  quick  as  a 
snake,  came  out  again,  showing  the  fat  fist 
armed  with  a  set  of  murderously  heavy  brass 
knucks,  and  he  bent  his  arm  in  a  crooked  sickle- 
like  stroke,  aiming  for  Devore's  left  temple. 
I've  always  been  satisfied  —  and  so  has  Devore 
—  that  if  the  blow  had  landed  true  his  skull 
would  have  caved  in  like  a  puff-ball.  Only  it 
never  landed. 

Above  me  a  shadow  of  something  hung  for 
the  hundredth  part  of  a  second,  something 
white  flashed  over  me  and  by  me,  moving  down 
ward  whizzingly;  something  cracked  on  some 
thing;  and  Mink  Satterlee  breathed  a  gentle 
little  grunt  right  in  Devore's  face  and  then 
relaxed  and  slid  down  on  the  floor,  lying  half 
under  the  table  and  half  in  the  tin  trough 
where  the  stubby  gas  jets  of  the  footlights 
stood  up,  with  his  legs  protruding  stiffly  out 
over  its  edge  toward  his  friends.  Subcon 
sciously  I  noted  that  his  socks  were  not  mates, 
one  of  them  being  blue  and  one  black;  also 
that  his  scalp  had  a  crescent-shaped  split 
place  in  it  just  between  and  above  his  half- 
closed  eyes.  All  this,  though,  couldn't  have 
taken  one-fifth  of  the  time  it  has  required  for 
me  to  tell  it.  It  couldn't  have  taken  more 
than  a  brace  of  seconds,  but  even  so  it  was 
time  enough  for  other  things  to  happen;  and 
I  looked  back  again  toward  the  center  of  the 

stage    just    as    Fighting    Dave    Dancy    seized 
_- 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

startled  old  Judge  Barbee  by  the  middle  from 
behind  and  flung  him  aside  so  roughly  that 
the  old  man  spun  round  twice,  clutching  at 
nothing,  and  then  sat  down  very  hard,  yards 
away  from  where  he  started  spinning. 

Dancy  stooped  for  the  gavel,  which  had 
fallen  from  the  judge's  hand,  being  minded, 
I  think,  to  run  the  convention  awhile  in  the 
interest  of  his  own  crowd.  But  his  greedy 
fingers  never  closed  over  its  black-walnut 
handle,  because,  facing  him,  he  saw  just  then 
what  made  him  freeze  solid  where  he  was. 

Out  from  behind  the  Evening  Press  table 
and  through  a  scattering  huddle  of  newspaper 
reporters,  stepping  on  the  balls  of  his  feet  as 
lightly  as  a  puss-cat,  emerged  Major  Putnam 
Stone.  His  sleeves  were  turned  back  off  his 
wrists  and  his  vest  flared  open.  His  head 
was  thrust  forward  so  that  the  tuft  of  goatee 
on  his  chin  stuck  straight  out  ahead  of  him 
like  a  little  burgee  in  a  fair  breeze.  His  face 
was  all  a  clear,  bright,  glowing  pink;  and  in 
his  right  hand  he  held  one  of  the  longest  cav 
alry  revolvers  that  ever  was  made,  I  reckon. 
It  had  a  square-butted  ivory  handle,  and  as  I 
saw  that  ivory  handle  I  knew  what  the  white 
thing  was  that  had  flashed  by  me  only  a 
moment  before  to  fell  Mink  Satterlee  so 
expeditiously. 

Writing  this,  I've  been  trying  to  think  of 
the  one  word  that  would  best  describe  how 
Major  Putnam  Stone  looked  to  me  as  he  ad- 


CUB     REPORTER     STORIES 

vanced  on  Dave  Dancy.  I  think  now  that 
the  proper  word  is  competent,  for  indeed  the 
old  major  did  look  most  competent  —  the 
tremendous  efficiency  he  radiated  filled  him 
out  and  made  him  seem  sundry  sizes  larger 
than  he  really  was.  A  great  emergency  acts 
upon  different  men  as  chemical  processes  act 
upon  different  metals.  Some  it  melts  like  lead, 
so  that  their  resolution  softens  and  runs  away 
from  them;  and  some  it  hardens  to  tempered 
steel.  There  was  the  old  major  now.  Always 
before  this  he  had  seemed  to  me  to  be  but 
pot  metal  and  putty,  and  here,  poised,  alert, 
ready  —  a  wire-drawn,  hard-hammered  Damas 
cus  blade  of  a  man  —  all  changed  and  trans 
formed  and  glorified,  he  was  coming  down  on 
Dave  Dancy,  finger  on  trigger,  thumb  on 
hammer,  eye  on  target,  dominating  the  whole 
scene. 

Ten  feet  from  him  he  halted  and  there 
was  nobody  between  them.  Somehow  every 
body  else  halted  too,  some  even  giving  back  a 
little.  Over  the  edge  of  the  stage  a  ring  of 
staring  faces,  like  a  high- water  mark,  showed 
where  the  onward  rushing  swell  of  the  Stickney 
city  delegates  had  checked  itself.  Seemingly 
to  all  at  once  came  the  realization  that  the 
destinies  of  the  fight  had  by  the  chances  of 
the  fight  been  entrusted  to  these  two  men  — 
to  Dancy  and  the  major  —  and  that  between 
them  the  issue  would  be  settled  one  way  or 

the  other. 

__  . 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

Still  at  a  half  crouch,  Dancy's  right  hand 
began  to  steal  back  under  the  skirt  of  his  long 
black  coat.  At  that  the  major  flung  up  the 
muzzle  of  his  weapon  so  that  it  pointed  sky 
ward,  and  he  braced  his  left  arm  at  his  side 
in  the  attitude  you  have  seen  in  the  pictures 
of  dueling  scenes  of  olden  times. 

"I  am  waiting,  sir,  for  you  to  draw,"  said 
the  major  quite  briskly.  "I  will  shoot  it 
out  with  you  to  see  whether  right  or  might 
shall  control  this  convention."  And  his  heels 
clicked  together  like  castanets. 

Dancy's  right  hand  kept  stealing  farther  and 
farther  back.  And  then  you  could  mark  by 
the  change  of  his  skin  and  by  the  look  out  of 
his  eyes  how  his  courage  was  clabbering  to 
whey  inside  him,  making  his  face  a  milky, 
curdled  white,  the  color  of  a  poorly  stirred 
emulsion,  and  then  he  quit  —  he  quit  cold  — 
his  hand  came  out  again  from  under  his  coat 
tails  and  it  was  an  empty  hand  and  wide  open. 
It  was  from  that  moment  on  that  through 
out  our  state  Fighting  Dave  Dancy  ceased  to 
be  Fighting  Dave  and  became  instead  Yaller 
Dave. 

"Then,  sir,"  said  the  major,  "as  you  do  not 
seem  to  care  to  shoot  it  out  with  me,  man  to 
man,  you  and  your  friends  will  kindly  withdraw 
from  this  stage  and  allow  the  business  of  this 
convention  to  proceed  in  an  orderly  manner." 

And  as  Dave  Dancy  started  to  go  somebody 
laughed.  In  another  second  we  were  all 

~~ ~~        [138] 


CUB     REPORTER     STORIES 

laughing  and  the  danger  was  over.  When  an 
American  crowd  begins  laughing  the  danger  is 
always  over. 

Newspaper  men  down  in  that  town  still 
talk  about  the  story  that  Ike  Webb  wrote  for 
the  last  edition  of  the  Evening  Press  that  after 
noon.  It  was  a  great  story,  as  Ike  Webb  told 
it  —  how,  still  sitting  on  the  floor,  old  Judge 
Barbee  got  his  wits  back  and  by  word  of  mouth 
commissioned  the  major  a  special  sergeant-at- 
arms;  how  the  major  privily  sent  men  to  close 
and  lock  and  hold  the  doors  so  that  the  Stick- 
ney  people  couldn't  get  out  to  bolt,  even  if 
they  had  now  been  of  a  mind  to  do  so;  how 
the  convention,  catching  the  spirit  of  the 
moment,  elected  the  major  its  temporary  chair 
man,  and  how  even  after  that,  for  quite  a 
spell,  until  some  of  his  friends  bethought  to 
remove  him,  Mink  Satterlee  slept  peacefully 
under  our  press  table  with  his  mismated  legs 
bridged  across  the  tin  trough  of  the  foot 
lights. 

In  rapid  succession  a  number  of  unusual 
events  occurred  in  the  Evening  Press  shop 
the  next  morning.  To  begin  with,  the  chief 
came  down  early.  He  had  a  few  words  in 
private  with  Devore  and  went  upstairs.  When 
the  major  came  at  eight  as  usual,  Devore  was 
waiting  for  him  at  the  door  of  the  city  room; 
and  as  they  went  upstairs  together,  side  by  side, 
[139] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

I  saw  Devore's  arm  steal  timidly  out  and  rest 
a  moment  on  the  major's  shoulder. 

The  major  was  the  first  to  descend.  Walk 
ing  unusually  erect,  even  for  him,  he  bustled 
into  the  telephone  booth.  Jessie,  our  operator, 
told  us  afterward  that  he  called  up  a  haber 
dasher,  and  in  a  voice  that  boomed  like  a  bell 
ordered  fourteen  of  those  plaited-bosom  shirts 
of  his,  the  same  to  be  made  up  and  delivered 
as  soon  as  possible.  Then  he  stalked  out. 
And  in  a  minute  or  two  more  Devore  came 
down  looking  happy  and  unhappy  and  em 
barrassed  and  exalted,  all  of  them  at  once. 
On  his  way  to  his  desk  he  halted  midway  of 
the  floor. 

"Gentlemen,"  he  said  huskily  —  "fellows, 
I  mean  —  I've  got  an  announcement  to  make, 
or  rather  two  announcements.  One  is  this: 
Right  here  before  you  fellows  who  heard  most 
of  them  I  want  to  take  back  all  the  mean 
things  I  ever  said  about  him  —  about  Major 
Stone  —  and  I  want  to  say  I'm  sorry  for  all 
the  mean  things  I've  done  to  him.  I've  tried 
to  beg  his  pardon,  but  he  wouldn't  listen  — 
he  wouldn't  let  me  beg  his  pardon — he 
—  he  said  everything  was  all  right.  That's 
one  announcement.  Here's  the  other:  The 
major  is  going  to  have  a  new  job  with  this 
paper.  He's  going  to  leave  the  city  staff. 
Hereafter  he's  going  to  be  upstairs  in  the  room 
next  to  the  chief.  He's  gone  out  now  to  pick 

out  his  own  desk.     He's  going  to  write  specials 
__ 


CUB     REPORTER     STORIES 

for  the  Sunday  —  specials  about  the  war. 
And  he's  going  to  do  it  on  a  decent  salary  too." 

I  judge  by  my  own  feelings  that  we  all 
wanted  to  cheer,  but  didn't  because  we  thought 
it  might  sound  theatrical  and  foolish.  Any 
how,  I  know  that  was  how  I  felt.  So  there 
was  a  little  awkward  pause. 

"What's  his  new  title  going  to  be?"  asked 
somebody  then. 

"The  title  is  appropriate  —  I  suggested  it 
myself,"  said  Devore.  "Major  Stone  is  going 
to  be  war  editor." 


1141 


V 

SMOKE    OF    BATTLE 


THIS  befell  during  the  period  that  Major 
Putnam  Stone,  at  the  age  of  sixty-two, 
held  a  job  as  cub  reporter  on  the  Even 
ing  Press  and  worked  at  it  until  his 
supply  of  fine  linen  and  the  patience  of  City 
Editor  Wilbert  Devore  frazzled  out  practically 
together.     The  episode  to  which  I  would  here 
direct  attention  came  to  pass  in  the  middle  of 
a  particularly  hot  week  in  the  middle  of  that 
particularly   hot    and   grubby   summer,    at   a 
time  when  the  major  was  still  wearing  the  last 
limp  survivor  of  his  once  adequate  stock  of 
frill-bosomed,    roll-collared    shirts,    and    when 
Devore's  scanty  stock  of  endurance  had  already 
worn  perilously  near  the  snapping  point. 

As  may  be  recalled,  Major  Stone  lived  a 
life  of  comparative  leisure  from  the  day  he 
came  out  of  the  Confederate  army,  a  seasoned 
veteran,  until  the  day  he  joined  the  staff  of  the 
Evening  Press,  a  rank  beginner;  and  of  these 

two  employments  one  lay   a  matter    of   four 
__ 


SMOKE     OF     BATTLE 


decades  back  in  a  half-forgotten  past,  while 
the  other  was  of  pressing  moment,  having 
to  do  with  Major  Stone's  enjoyment  of  his 
daily  bread  and  other  elements  of  nutrition 
regarded  as  essential  to  the  sustenance  of 
human  life.  In  his  military  career  he  might 
have  been  more  or  less  of  a  success.  Cer 
tainly  he  must  have  acquitted  himself  with 
some  measure  of  personal  credit;  the  rank  he 
had  attained  in  the  service  and  the  standing 
he  had  subsequently  enjoyed  among  his  com 
rades  abundantly  testified  to  that. 

As  a  reporter  he  was  absolutely  a  total  loss; 
for,  as  already  set  forth  in  some  detail,  he  was 
hopelessly  old-fashioned  in  thought  and  speech 
—  hopelessly  old-fashioned  and  pedantic  in  his 
style  of  writing;  and  since  his  mind  mainly 
concerned  itself  with  retrospections  upon  the 
things  that  happened  between  April,  1861, 
and  May,  1865,  he  very  naturally  —  and  very 
frequently  —  forgot  that  to  a  newspaper  re 
porter  every  day  is  a  new  day  and  a  new  begin 
ning,  and  that  yesterday  always  is  or  always 
should  be  ancient  history,  let  alone  the  time- 
tarnished  yesterdays  of  forty-odd  years  ago. 
Indeed  I  doubt  whether  the  major  ever  com 
prehended  that  first  commandment  of  the 
prentice  reporter's  catechism. 

Devore,  himself  no  grand  and  glittering  suc 
cess  as  a  newspaper  man,  nevertheless  had 
mighty  little  use  for  the  pottering,  ponderous 

old  major.     Devore  did  not  believe  that  bricks 
__ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

could  be  made  without  straw.  He  consid 
ered  it  a  waste  of  time  and  raw  material  to 
try.  Through  that  summer  he  kept  the  major 
on  the  payroll  solely  because  the  chief  so  willed 
it.  But,  though  he  might  not  discharge  the 
major,  at  least  he  could  bait  him  —  and  bait 
him  Devore  did  —  not,  mind  you,  with  words, 
but  with  a  silent,  sublimated  contempt  more 
bitter  and  more  biting  than  any  words. 

So  there,  on  the  occasion  in  question,  the 
situation  stood  —  the  major  hanging  on  tooth 
and  nail  to  his  small  job,  because  he  needed 
most  desperately  the  twelve  dollars  a  week 
it  brought  him;  the  city  editor  regarding  him 
and  all  his  manifold  reportorial  sins  of  omis 
sion,  commission  and  remission  with  a  cor 
rosive,  speechless  venom;  and  the  rest  of  us 
in  the  city  room  divided  in  our  sympathies 
as  between  those  two.  We  sympathized  with 
Devore  for  having  to  carry  so  woful  an  incom 
petent  upon  his  small  and  overworked  crew; 
we  sympathized  with  the  kindly,  gentle,  tire 
some  old  major  for  his  bungling,  vain  attempts 
to  creditably  cover  the  small  and  piddling 
assignments  that  came  his  way. 

I  remember  the  date  mighty  well  —  the 
third  of  July.  For  three  days  now  the  Demo 
cratic  party,  in  national  convention  assembled 
at  Chicago,  had  been  in  the  throes  of  labor. 
It  had  been  expected  —  in  fact  had  been  as 
good  as  promised  —  that  by  ten  o'clock  that 
evening  the  deadlock  would  melt  before  a 
[144] 


SMOKE     OF     BATTLE 


sweetly  gushing  freshet  of  party  harmony  and 
the  head  of  the  presidential  ticket  would  be 
named,  wherefore  in  the  Evening  Press  shop 
a  late  shift  had  stayed  on  duty  to  get  out  an 
extra.  Back  in  the  press-room  the  press  was 
dressed.  A  front  page  form  was  made  up  and 
ready,  all  but  the  space  where  the  name  of  the 
nominee  would  be  inserted  when  the  flash 
came;  and  in  the  alley  outside  a  picked  squad 
of  newsboys,  renowned  for  speed  of  the  leg 
and  carrying  quality  of  the  voice,  awaited 
their  wares,  meanwhile  skylarking  under  the 
eye  of  a  circulation  manager. 

Besides,  there  was  no  telling  when  an  arrest 
might  be  made  in  the  Bullard  murder  case  — 
that  just  by  itself  would  provide  ample  excuse 
for  an  extra.  Two  days  had  passed  and  two 
nights  since  the  killing  of  Attorney-at-Law 
Rodney  G.  Bullard,  and  still  the  killing,  to 
quote  a  favorite  line  of  the  local  descriptive 
writers,  "remained  shrouded  in  impenetrable 
mystery."  If  the  police  force,  now  busily 
engaged  in  running  clues  into  theories  and 
theories  into  the  ground,  should  by  any  blind 
chance  of  fortune  be  lucky  enough  to  ascer 
tain  the  identity  and  lay  hands  upon  the  per 
son  of  Bullard's  assassin,  the  whole  town, 
regardless  of  the  hour,  would  rise  up  out  of 
bed  to  read  the  news  of  it.  It  was  the  biggest 
crime  story  that  town  had  known  for  ten 
years;  one  of  the  biggest  crime  stories  it  had 
ever  known. 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

In  the  end  our  waiting  all  went  for  nothing. 
There  were  no  developments  at  Central  Sta 
tion  or  elsewhere  in  the  Bullard  case,  and  at 
Chicago  there  was  no  nomination.  At  nine- 
thirty  a  bulletin  came  over  our  leased  wire 
saying  that  Tammany,  having  been  beaten 
before  the  Resolutions  Committee,  was  still 
battling  on  the  floor  for  its  candidate;  so  that 
finally  the  convention  had  adjourned  until 
morning,  and  now  the  delegates  were  stream 
ing  out  of  the  hall,  too  tired  to  cheer  and  almost 
too  tired  to  jeer  —  all  of  which  was  sad  news 
to  us,  because  it  meant  that,  instead  of  taking 
a  holiday  on  the  Fourth,  we  must  work  until 
noon  at  least,  and  very  likely  until  later. 
Down  that  way  the  Fourth  was  not  observed 
with  quite  the  firecrackery  and  skyrockety 
enthusiasm  that  marked  its  celebration  in  most 
of  the  states  to  the  north  of  us;  nevertheless, 
a  day  off  was  a  day  off  and  we  were  deeply  dis 
gusted  at  the  turn  affairs  had  taken.  It  was 
almost  enough  to  make  a  fellow  feel  friendly 
toward  the  Republicans. 

Following  the  tension  there  was  a  snapback; 
a  feeling  of  languor  and  disappointment  pos 
sessed  us.  Devore  slammed  down  the  lid  of 
his  desk  and  departed,  cursing  the  luck  as  he 
went.  Harty,  the  telegraph  editor,  and  Wil 
bur,  the  telegraph  operator,  rolled  down  their 
shirtsleeves  and,  taking  their  coats  over  their 
arms,  departed  in  company  for  Tony's  place 
up  at  the  corner,  where  cool  beers  were  to  be 
[146] 


SMOKE     OF     BATTLE 


found  and  electric  fans,  and  a  business  men's 
lunch  served  at  all  hours. 

That  left  in  the  city  room  four  or  five  men. 
Sprawled  upon  battered  chairs  and  draped 
over  battered  desks,  they  inhaled  the  smells 
of  rancid  greases  that^floated  in  to  them  from 
the  back  of  the  building;  they  coddled  their 
disappointment  to  keep  it  warm  and  they 
talked  shop.  When  it  comes  to  talking  shop 
in  season  and  out  of  season,  neither  stock  actors 
nor  hospital  surgeons  are  worse  offenders  than 
newspaper  reporters  —  especially  young  news 
paper  reporters,  as  all  these  men  were  except 
only  Major  Stone. 

It  was  inevitable  that  the  talk  should  turn 
upon  the  Bullard  murder,  and  that  the  failure 
of  the  police  force  to  find  the  killer  or  even  to 
find  a  likely  suspect  should  be  the  hinge  for 
its  turning.  For  the  moment  Ike  Webb  had 
the  floor,  expounding  his  own  pet  theories. 
Ike  was  a  good  talker  —  a  mighty  good  reporter 
too,  let  me  tell  you.  Across  the  room  from 
Ike,  tilted  back  in  a  chair  against  the  wall, 
sat  the  major,  looking  shabby  and  a  bit  for 
lorn.  For  a  month  now  shabbiness  had  been 
seizing  on  the  major,  spreading  over  him  like 
a  mildew.  It  started  first  with  his  shoes,  which 
turned  brown  and  then  cracked  across  the 
toes,  it  extended  to  his  hat,  which  sagged  in 
its  brim  and  became  a  moldy  green  in  its 
crown,  and  now  it  had  touched  his  coat 
lapels,  his  waistcoat  front,  his  collar  —  his 
[147] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

rolling  Lord  Byron  collar  —  and  his  sleeve 
ends. 

The  major's  harmlessly  pompous  manner 
was  all  gone  from  him  that  night.  Of  late  his 
self-assurance  had  seemed  to  be  fraying  and 
frazzling  away,  along  with  those  old-timey, 
full-bosomed  shirts  of  which  he  had  in  times 
gone  by  been  so  tremendously  proud.  It  was 
as  though  the  passing  of  the  one  marked  the 
passing  of  the  other  —  symbolic  as  you  might 
say.  Formerly,  too,  the  major  had  also  ex 
celled  mightily  in  miscellaneous  conversation, 
dominating  it  by  sheer  weight  of  tediousness. 
Now  he  sat  silent  while  these  youngsters  with 
their  unthatched  lips  —  born,  most  of  them, 
after  he  reached  middle  age  —  babbled  the 
jargon  of  their  trade.  He  considered  a  little 
ravelly  strip  along  one  of  his  cuffs  solicitously. 

Ike  Webb  was  saying  this — that  the  biggest 
thing  in  the  whole  created  world  was  a  big 
scoop — an  exclusive,  world-beating,  bottled-up 
scoop  of  a  scoop.  Nothing  that  could  possibly 
come  into  a  reporter's  life  was  one-half  so  big 
and  so  glorious  and  satisfying.  He  warmed  to 
his  theme: 

"Gee!  fellows,  but  wouldn't  it  be  great  to 
get  a  scoop  on  a  thing  like  this  Bullard  mur 
der!  Just  suppose  now  that  one  of  us,  all  by 
himself,  found  the  person  who  did  the  shooting 
and  got  a  full  confession  from  him,  whoever 
he  was;  and  got  the  gun  that  it  was  done 
with  —  got  the  whole  thing  —  and  then  turned 
[1481 


SMOKE     OF     BATTLE 


it  loose  all  over  the  front  page  before  that  big 
stiff  of  a  Chief  Gotlieb  down  at  Central  Station 
knew  a  thing  about  it.  Beating  the  police  to 
it  would  be  the  best  part  of  that  job.  That's 
the  way  they  do  things  in  New  York.  In 
New  York  it's  the  newspapers  that  do  the 
real  work  on  big  murder  mysteries,  and  the 
police  take  their  tips  from  them.  Why,  some 
of  the  best  detectives  in  New  York  are  reporters. 
Look  what  they  did  in  that  Guldensuppe  case! 
Look  at  what  they've  done  in  half  a  dozen 
other  big  cases!  Down  here  we  just  follow 
along,  like  sheep,  behind  a  bunch  of  fat-necked 
cops,  taking  their  leavings.  Up  there  a 
paper  turns  a  man  loose,  with  an  unlimited 
expense  account  and  all  the  time  he  needs,  and 
tells  him  to  go  to  it.  That's  the  right  way 
too!" 

By  that  the  others  knew  Ike  Webb  was 
thinking  of  what  Vogel  had  told  him.  Vogel 
was  a  gifted  but  admittedly  erratic  genius 
from  the  metropolis  who  had  come  upon  us  as 
angels  sometimes  do — unawares — two  weeks 
before,  with  cinders  in  his  ears  and  the  grime 
of  a  dusty  right-of-way  upon  his  collar.  He 
had  worked  for  the  sheet  two  weeks  and 
then,  on  a  Saturday  night,  had  borrowed  what 
sums  of  small  change  he  could  and  under  cover 
of  friendly  night  had  moved  on  to  parts  un 
known,  leaving  us  dazzled  by  the  careless, 
somewhat  patronizing  brilliance  of  his  man- 
ner,  and  stuffed  to  our  earlobes  with  tales  of 
[149] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

the  splendid,  adventurous,  bohemian  lives  that 
newspaper  men  in  New  York  lived. 

"Well,  I  know  this,"  put  in  little  Pinky 
Gilfoil,  who  was  red-headed,  red-freckled  and 
red-tempered:  "I'd  give  my  right  leg  to  pull 
off  that  Bullard  story  as  a  scoop.  No,  not 
my  right  leg  —  a  reporter  needs  all  the  legs 
he's  got;  but  I'd  give  my  right  arm  and  throw 
in  an  eye  for  good  measure.  It  would  be  the 
making  of  a  reporter  in  this  town  —  he'd  have 
'em  all  eating  out  of  his  hand  after  that."  He 
licked  his  lips.  Even  the  bare  thought  of  the 
thing  tasted  pretty  good  to  Pinky. 

"Now  you're  whistling!"  chimed  Ike  Webb. 
"The  fellow  who  single-handed  got  that  tale 
would  have  a  job  on  this  paper  as  long  as  he 
lived.  The  chief  would  just  naturally  have 
to  hand  him  more  money.  In  New  York, 
though,  he'd  get  a  big  cash  bonus  besides,  an 
award  they  call  it  up  there.  I'd  go  anywhere 
and  do  anything  and  take  any  kind  of  a  chance 
to  land  that  story  as  an  exclusive  —  yes,  or 
any  other  big  story." 

To  all  this  the  major,  it  appeared,  had  been 
listening,  for  now  he  spoke  up  in  a  pretty  fair 
imitation  of  his  old  impressive  manner: 

"But,  young  gentlemen  —  pardon  me  —  do 
you  seriously  think  —  any  of  you  —  that  any 
honorarium,  however  large,  should  or  could 
be  sufficient  temptation  to  induce  one  in  your 
—  in  our  profession  —  to  give  utterance  in 
print  to  a  matter  that  he  had  learned,  let  us 
~~"  [150] 


SMOKE     OF     BATTLE 


say,  in  confidence?  And  suppose  also  that  by 
printing  it  he  brought  suffering  or  disgrace 
upon  innocent  parties.  Unless  one  felt  that 
he  was  serving  the  best  ends  of  society  — 
unless  one,  in  short,  were  actuated  by  the 
highest  of  human  motives  —  could  one  afford 
to  do  such  a  thing?  And,  under  any  circum 
stances,  could  one  violate  a  trust  —  could  one 
violate  the  common  obligation  of  a  gentleman's 

rules  of  deportment " 

"Major,"  broke  in  Ike  Webb  earnestly,  "the 
way  I  look  at  it,  a  reporter  can't  afford  too 
many  of  the  luxuries  you're  mentioning.  His 
duty,  it  seems  to  me,  is  to  his  paper  first  and 
the  rest  of  the  world  afterward.  His  paper 
ought  to  be  his  mother  and  his  father  and  all 
his  family.  If  he  gets  a  big  scoop  —  no  mat 
ter  how  he  gets  it  or  where  he  gets  it  —  he 
ought  to  be  able  to  figure  out  some  way  of 
getting  it  into  print.  It's  not  alone  what  he 
owes  his  paper  —  it's  what  he  owes  himself. 
Personally  I  wouldn't  be  interested  for  a  minute 
in  bringing  the  person  that  killed  Rod  Bullard 
to  justice — that's  not  the  point.  He  was  a 
pretty  shady  person  —  Rod  Bullard.  By  all 
accounts  he  got  what  was  coming  to  him.  It's 
the  story  itself  that  I'd  want." 

"Say,  listen  here,  major,"  put  in  Pinky 
Gilfoil,  suddenly  possessed  of  a  strengthening 
argument;  "I  reckon  back  yonder  in  the  Civil 
War,  when  you  all  got  the  smoke  of  battle  in 
your  noses,  you  didn't  stop  to  consider  that 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

you  were  about  to  make  a  large  crop  of  widows 
and  orphans  and  cause  suffering  to  a  whole 
slue  of  innocent  people  that'd  never  done  you 
any  harm!  You  didn't  stop  then,  did  you? 
I'll  bet  you  didn't  —  you  just  sailed  in!  It 
was  your  duty  —  the  right  thing  to  do  —  and 
you  just  went  and  did  it.  'War  is  hell!'  Sher 
man  said.  Well,  so  is  newspaper  work  hell 

—  in  a  way.     And  smelling  out  a  big  story 
ought  to  be  the  same  to  a  reporter  that  the 
smoke  of  battle  is  to  a  soldier.     That's  right 

—  I'll  leave  it  to  any  fellow  here  if  that  ain't 
right!"  he  wound  up,  forgetting  in  his  enthu 
siasm  to  be  grammatical. 

It  was  an  unfortunate  simile  to  be  making 
and  Pinky  should  have  known  better,  for  at 
Pinky's  last  words  the  old  major's  mild  eye 
widened  and,  expanding  himself,  he  brought 
his  chair  legs  down  to  the  floor  with  a  thump. 

"Ah,  yes!"  he  said,  and  his  voice  took  on 
still  more  of  its  old  ringing  quality.  "Speak 
ing  of  battles,  I  am  just  reminded,  young 
gentlemen,  that  tomorrow  is  the  anniversary 
of  the  fall  of  Vicksburg.  Though  Northern- 
born,  General  Pemberton  was  a  gallant  officer 

—  none  of  our  own  Southron  leaders  was  more 
gallant  —  but  it  has  always  seemed  to  me  that 
his   defense   of   Vicksburg   was   marked   by   a 
series  of  the  most  lamentable  and  disastrous 
mistakes.     If  you  care  to  listen,  I  will  explain 
further."     And    he    squared    himself   forward, 

with  one  short,  plump  hand  raised,  ready  to 

__ 


SMOKE     OF     BATTLE 


tick  off  his  points  against  Pemberton  upon  his 
fingers. 

By  experience  dearly  bought  at  the  expense 
of  our  ear-drums,  the  members  of  the  Evening 
Press  staff  knew  what  that  meant;  for  as  you 
already  know,  the  major's  conversational  spe 
cialty  was  the  Civil  War  —  it  and  its  cam 
paigns.  Describing  it,  he  made  even  war  a 
commonplace  and  a  tiresome  topic.  In  his  hands 
an  account  of  the  hardest  fought  battle  became 
a  tremendously  uninteresting  thing.  He  weeded 
out  all  the  thrills  and  in  their  places  planted 
hedges  of  dusty,  deadly  dry  statistics.  When 
the  major  started  on  the  war  it  was  time  to  be 
going.  One  by  one  the  youngsters  got  up  and 
slipped  out.  Presently  the  major,  booming 
away  like  a  bell  buoy,  became  aware  that  his 
audience  had  dwindled.  Only  Ike  Webb  re 
mained,  and  Ike  was  getting  upon  his  feet  and 
reaching  for  the  peg  where  his  coat  swung. 

"I'm  sorry  to  leave  you  right  in  the  middle 
of  your  story,  major;  but,  honestly,  I've  got 
to  be  going,"  apologized  Ike.  "Good  night, 
and  don't  forget  this,  major"  —  Ike  had  halted 
at  the  door  —  "when  a  big  story  comes  your 
way  freeze  to  it  with  both  hands  and  slam  it 
across  the  plate  as  a  scoop.  Do  that  and  you 
can  give  'em  all  the  laugh.  Good  night  again 
—  see  you  in  the  morning,  major!" 

He  grinned  to  himself  as  he  turned  away. 
The  major  was  a  mighty  decent,  tender-hearted 
little  old  scout,  a  gentleman  by  birth  and  breed- 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

ing,  even  if  he  was  down  and  out  and  dog-poor. 
It  was  a  shame  that  Devore  kept  him  skitter 
ing  round  on  little  picayunish  jobs  —  running 
errands,  that  was  really  what  it  was.  Still, 
at  that,  the  old  major  was  no  reporter  and 
never  would  be.  He  wouldn't  know  a  big 
story  if  he  ran  into  it  on  the  big  road  —  it 
would  have  to  burst  right  in  his  face  before  he 
recognized  it.  And  even  then  the  chances  were 
that  he  wouldn't  know  what  to  do  with  it.  It 
was  enough  to  make  a  fellow  grin. 

Deserted  by  the  last  of  his  youthful  com 
patriots  —  which  was  what  he  himself  gener 
ally  called  them  —  the  major  lingered  a  moment 
in  heavy  thought.  He  glanced  about  the 
cluttered  city  room,  now  suddenly  grown 
large  and  empty.  This  was  the  theater  where 
his  own  little  drama  of  unfitness  and  failure 
and  private  mortification  had  been  staged  and 
acted.  It  had  run  nearly  a  month  now,  and  a 
month  is  a  long  run  for  a  small  tragedy  in  a 
newspaper  office  or  anywhere  else.  He  shook 
his  head.  He  shook  it  as  though  he  were  trying 
to  shake  it  clear  of  a  job  lot  of  old-fashioned, 
antiquated  ideals  —  as  though  he  were  trying 
to  make  room  for  newer,  more  useful,  more 
modern  conceptions.  Then  he  settled  his 
aged  and  infirm  slouch  hat  more  firmly  upon 
his  round-domed  skull,  straightened  his  shoul 
ders  and  stumped  out. 

At  the  second  turning  up  the  street  from  the 
office  an  observant  onlooker  might  have  noticed 
"  [154] 


SMOKE     OF     BATTLE 


a  small,  an  almost  imperceptible  change  in 
the  old  man's  bearing.  There  was  not  a  sneaky 
bone  in  the  major's  body  —  he  walked  as  he 
thought  and  as  he  talked,  in  straight  lines; 
but  before  he  turned  the  corner  he  glanced  up 
and  down  the  empty  sidewalk  in  a  quick, 
furtive  fashion,  and  after  he  had  swung  into 
the  side  street  a  trifle  of  the  steam  seemed 
gone  from  his  stiff-spined,  hard-heeled  gait. 
It  ceased  to  be  a  strut;  it  became  a  plod. 

The  street  he  had  now  entered  was  a  badly 
lighted  street,  with  long  stretches  of  murki- 
ness  between  small  patches  of  gas-lamped 
brilliance.  By  day  the  houses  that  walled  it 
would  have  showed  themselves  as  shabby  and 
gone  to  seed  —  the  sort  of  houses  that  second 
cousins  move  into  after  first  families  have 
moved  out.  Two-thirds  of  the  way  along  the 
block  the  major  turned  in  at  a  sagged  gate. 
He  traversed  a  short  walk  of  seamed  and 
decrepit  flagging,  where  tufts  of  rank  grass 
sprouted  between  the  fractures  in  the  limestone 
slabs,  and  mounted  the  front  porch  of  a  house 
that  had  cheap  boarding  house  written  all 
over  it. 

When  the  major  opened  the  front  door  the 
tepid  smell  that  gushed  out  to  greet  him  was 
the  smell  of  a  cheap  boarding  house  too,  if  you 
know  what  I  mean  —  a  spilt-kerosene,  boiled- 
cabbage,  dust-in-the-corners  smell.  Once  upon 
a  time  the  oilcloth  upon  the  floor  of  the  entry 

way  had  exhibited  a  vivid  and  violent  pattern 
__ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

of  green  octagons  upon  a  red  and  yellow 
background,  but  that  had  been  in  some  far 
distant  day  of  its  youth  and  freshness.  Now 
it  was  worn  to  a  scaly,  crumbly  color  of 
nothing  at  all,  and  it  was  frayed  into  fringes 
at  the  door  and  in  places  scuffed  clear  through, 
so  that  the  knot-holes  of  the  naked  planking 
showed  like  staring  eyes. 

Standing  just  inside  the  hall,  the  major 
glanced  down  first  at  the  floor  and  then  up  to 
where  in  a  pendent  nub  a  pinprick  of  light 
like  a  captive  lightning-bug  flickered  up  and 
down  feebly  as  the  air  pumped  through  the 
pipe;  and  out  of  his  chest  the  major  fetched 
a  small  sigh.  It  was  a  sigh  of  resignation, 
but  it  had  loneliness  in  it  too.  Well,  it  was  a 
come-down,  after  all  these  peaceful  and  con 
genial  years  spent  among  the  marble-columned, 
red-plushed  glories  of  the  old  Gault  House,  to 
be  living  in  this  place. 

The  major  had  been  here  now  almost  a  month. 
Very  quietly,  almost  secretly,  he  had  come 
hither  when  he  found  that  by  no  amount  of 
stretching  could  his  pay  as  a  reporter  on  the 
Evening  Press  be  made  to  cover  the  cost  of 
living  as  he  had  been  accustomed  to  live  prior 
to  that  disastrous  day  when  the  major  waked 
up  in  the  morning  to  find  that  all  his  inher 
ited  investments  had  vanished  over  night  — 
and,  vanishing  so,  had  taken  with  them  the 
small  but  sufficient  income  that  had  always 
been  ample  for  his  needs. 
[156] 


SMOKE     OF     BATTLE 


In  that  month  the  major  had  seen  but  one 
or  two  of  his  fellow  lodgers,  slouching  forms 
that  passed  him  by  in  the  gloom  of  the 
half -lighted  hallways  or  on  the  creaky  stairs. 
His  landlady  he  saw  but  once  a  week  —  on 
Saturday,  which  was  settlement  day.  She 
was  a  forlorn,  gray  creature,  half  blind,  and 
she  felt  her  way  about  gropingly.  By  the 
droop  in  her  spine  and  by  the  corners  of  her 
lips,  permanently  puckered  from  holding  pins 
in  her  mouth,  a  close  observer  would  have 
guessed  that  she  had  been  a  seamstress  before 
her  eyes  gave  out  on  her  and  she  took  to  keep 
ing  lodgers.  Of  the  character  of  the  establish 
ment  the  innocent  old  major  knew  nothing;  he 
knew  that  it  was  cheap  and  that  it  was  on  a 
quiet  by-street,  and  for  his  purposes  that  was 
sufficient. 

He  heaved  another  small  sigh  and  passed 
slowly  up  the  worn  steps  of  the  stairwell  until 
he  came  to  the  top  of  the  house.  His  room 
was  on  the  attic  floor,  the  middle  room  of  the 
three  that  lined  the  bare  hall  on  one  side. 
The  door-knob  was  broken  off;  only  its  iron 
center  remained.  His  fingers  slipped  as  he 
fumbled  for  a  purchase  upon  the  metal  core; 
but  finally,  after  two  attempts,  he  gripped  it 
and  it  turned,  admitting  him  into  the  dark 
ness  of  a  stuffy  interior.  The  major  made 
haste  to  open  the  one  small  window  before 
he  lit  the  single  gas  jet.  Its  guttery  flare 

exposed   a  bed,   with  a  thin  mattress  and  a 
__ 


,  THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

skimpy  cover,  shoved  close  up  under  the 
sloping  wall;  a  sprained  chair  on  its  last  legs; 
an  old  horsehide  trunk;  a  shaky  washstand  of 
cheap  yellow  pine,  garnished  forth  with  a  ewer 
and  a  basin;  a  limp,  frayed  towel;  and  a 
minute  segment  of  pale  pink  soap. 

Major  Stone  was  in  the  act  of  removing  his 
coat  when  he  became  aware  of  a  certain  sound, 
occurring  at  quick  intervals.  In  the  posture 
of  a  plump  and  mature  robin  he  cocked  his 
head  on  one  side  to  listen;  and  now  he  remem 
bered  that  he  had  heard  the  same  sound  the 
night  before,  and  the  night  before  that.  These 
times,  though,  he  had  heard  it  intermittently 
and  dimly,  as  he  tossed  about  half  awake  and 
half  asleep,  trying  to  accommodate  his  elderly 
bones  to  the  irregularities  of  his  hot  and  un 
comfortable  bed.  But  now  he  heard  it  more 
plainly,  and  at  once  he  recognized  it  for  what 
it  was  —  the  sound  of  a  woman  crying;  a 
wrenching  succession  of  deep,  racking  gulps, 
and  in  between  them  little  moaning,  panting 
breaths,  as  of  utter  exhaustion  —  a  sound 
such  as  might  be  distilled  from  the  very  dregs 
of  a  grief  too  great  to  be  borne. 

He  looked  about  him,  his  eyes  and  ears 
searching  for  further  explanation  of  this.  He 
had  it.  There  was  a  door  set  in  the  cross- 
wall  of  his  room  —  a  door  bolted  and  nailed 
up.  It  had  a  transom  over  it  and  against  the 
dirty  glass  of  the  transom  a  light  was  reflected, 

and  through  the  door  and  the  transom  the 
~  __ 


SMO  KE     OF     BATTLE 


sound  came.  The  person  in  trouble,  whoever 
it  might  be,  was  in  that  next  room  —  and  that 
person  was  a  woman  and  she  was  in  dire  dis 
tress.  There  was  a  compelling  note  in  her 
sobbing. 

Undecided,  Major  Stone  stood  a  minute 
rubbing  his  nose  pensively  with  a  small  fore 
finger;  then  the  resolution  to  act  fastened 
upon  him.  He  slipped  his  coat  back  on, 
smoothed  down  his  thin  mane  of  reddish 
gray  hah*  with  his  hands,  stepped  out  into  the 
hall  and  rapped  delicately  with  a  knuckled 
finger  upon  the  door  of  the  next  room.  There 
was  no  answer,  so  he  rapped  a  little  harder; 
and  at  that  a  sob  checked  itself  and  broke  off 
chokingly  in  the  throat  that  uttered  it.  From 
within  a  voice  came.  It  was  a  shaken,  tear- 
drained  voice  —  flat  and  uncultivated. 

"Who's  there?"  The  major  cleared  his 
throat.  "Is  it  a  woman  —  or  a  man?"  de 
manded  the  unseen  speaker  without  waiting 
for  an  answer  to  the  first  question. 

"It  is  a  gentleman,"  began  the  major  —  "a 
gentleman  who " 

"Come  on  in!"  she  bade  him  —  "the  door 
ain't  latched." 

And  at  that  the  major  turned  the  knob  and 
looked  into  a  room  that  was  practically  a  coun 
terpart  of  his  own,  except  that,  instead  of  a 
trunk,  a  cheap  imitation-leather  suitcase  stood 
upright  on  the  floor,  its  sides  bulging  and 

strained   from   over-packing.     Upon   the   bed, 

_ .        __ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

fully  dressed,  was  stretched  a  woman  —  or, 
rather,  a  girl.  Her  head  was  just  rising  from 
the  crumpled  pillow  and  her  eyes,  red-rimmed 
and  widely  distended,  stared  full  into  his. 

What  she  saw,  as  she  sat  up,  was  a  short, 
elderly  man  with  a  solicitous,  gentle  face;  the 
coat  sleeves  were  turned  back  off  his  wrists 
and  his  linen  shirt  jutted  out  between  the 
unfastened  upper  buttons  and  buttonholes  of 
his  waistcoat'.  What  the  major  saw  was  a 
girl  of  perhaps  twenty  or  maybe  twenty-two — 
in  her  present  state  it  was  hard  to  guess  — 
with  hunched-in  shoulders  and  dyed,  stringy 
hair  falling  in  a  streaky  disarray  down  over 
her  face  like  unraveled  hemp. 

It  was  her  face  that  told  her  story.  Upon 
the  drawn  cheeks  and  the  drooped,  woful  lips 
there  was  no  dabbing  of  cosmetics  now;  the 
professional  smile,  painted,  pitiable  and  betray 
ing,  was  lacking  from  the  characterless  mouth, 
yet  the  major — sweet-minded,  clean-living  old 
man  though  he  was — knew  at  a  glance  what 
manner  of  woman  he  had  found  here  in  this 
lodging  house.  It  was  the  face  of  a  woman 
who  never  intentionally  does  any  evil  and  yet 
rarely  gets  a  chance  to  do  any  good  —  a  weak, 
indecisive,  commonplace  face;  and  every  line 
in  it  was  a  line  of  least  resistance. 

That  then  was  what  these  two  saw  in  each 
other  as  they  stared  a  moment  across  the 
intervening  space.  It  was  the  girl  who  took 
the  initiative. __ 

__ 


SMOKE     OF     BATTLE 

"Are  you  one  of  the  police?"  Then  in 
stantly  on  the  heels  of  the  query:  "No;  I 
know  better'n  that  —  you  ain't  no  police!" 

Her  voice  was  unmusical,  vulgar  and  husky 
from  much  weeping.  Magically,  though,  she 
had  checked  her  sobbing  to  an  occasional  hard 
gulp  that  clicked  down  in  her  throat. 

"No,  ma'am,"  said  Major  Stone,  with  a 
grave  and  respectful  courtesy,  "I  am  not 
connected  with  the  police  department.  I  am 
a  professional  man  —  associated  at  this  time 
with  the  practice  of  journalism.  I  have  the 
apartment  or  chamber  adjoining  yours  and, 
accidentally  overhearing  a  member  of  the  oppo 
site  sex  in  seeming  distress,  I  took  it  upon 
myself  to  offer  any  assistance  that  might  lie 
within  my  power.  If  I  am  intruding  I  will 
withdraw." 

"No,"  she  said;  "it  ain't  no  intrusion.  I 
wisht,  please,  sir,  you'd  come  in  jest  a  min 
ute  anyway.  I  feel  like  I  jest  got  to  talk  to 
somebody  a  minute.  I'm  sorry,  though,  if 
I  disturbed  you  by  my  cry  in'  —  but  I  jest 
couldn't  help  it.  Last  night  and  the  night 
before  —  that  was  the  first  night  I  come  here 
—  I  cried  all  night  purty  near;  but  I  kept  my 
head  in  the  bedclothes.  But  tonight,  after  it 
got  dark  up  here  and  me  layin'  here  all  alone,  I 
felt 's  if  I  couldn't  stand  it  no  longer.  Honest, 
I  like  to  died!  Right  this  minute  I'm  almost 
plum'  distracted." 

The  major  advanced  a  step. 

[161]  ~~~~ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

"I  assure  you  I  deeply  regret  to  learn  of 
your  unhappiness,"  he  said.  "If  you  desire 
it  I  will  be  only  too  glad  to  summon  our 
worthy  landlady,  Miss — Miss "he  paused. 

"Miss  La  Mode,"  she  said,  divining  — 
"Blanche  La  Mode  —  that's  my  name.  I 
come  from  Indianapolis,  Indiana.  But  please, 
mister,  don't  call  that  there  woman.  I  don't 
want  to  see  her.  For  a  while  I  didn't  think 
I  wanted  to  see  nobody,  and  yit  I've  known  all 
along,  from  the  very  first,  that  sooner  or  later 
I'd  jest  naturally  have  to  talk  to  somebody. 
I  knew  I'd  jest  have  to!"  she  repeated  with  a 
kind  of  weak  intensity.  "And  it  might  jest 
as  well  be  you  as  anybody,  I  guess." 

She  sat  up  on  the  side  of  the  bed,  dangling 
her  feet,  and  subconsciously  the  major  took 
in  fuller  details  of  her  attire  —  the  cheap  white 
slippers  with  rickety,  worndown  high  heels; 
the  sleazy  stockings;  the  over-decorated  skirt 
of  shabby  blue  cloth;  the  soiled  and  rumpled 
waist  of  coarse  lace,  gaping  away  from  the 
scrawny  neck,  where  the  fastenings  had  pulled 
awry.  Looped  about  her  throat  and  dangling 
down  on  her  flat  breast,  where  they  heaved  up 
and  down  with  her  breathing,  was  a  double 
string  of  pearls  that  would  have  been  worth 
ten  thousand  dollars  had  they  been  genuine 
pearls.  A  hand  which  was  big-knuckled  and 
thin  held  a  small,  moist  wad  of  handkerchief. 
About  her  there  was  something  unmistakably 
bucolic,  and  yet  she  was  town-branded,  too, 
[162] 


SMOKE     OF     BATTLE 


flesh  and  soul.  Major  Stone  bowed  with  the 
ceremonious  detail  that  was  a  part  of  him. 

"My  name,  ma'am,  is  Stone  —  Major  Put 
nam  Stone,  at  your  service,"  he  told  her. 

"Yes,  sir,"  she  said,  seeming  not  to  catch 
either  his  name  or  his  title.  "Well,  mister, 
I'm  goin'  to  tell  you  something  that'll  maybe 
surprise  you.  I  ain't  goin'  to  ast  you  not  to 
tell  anybody,  'cause  I  guess  you  will  anyhow, 
sooner  or  later;  and  it  don't  make  much  dif 
ference  if  you  do.  But  seems  's  if  I  can't  hold 
in  no  longer.  I  guess  maybe  I'll  feel  easier  in 
my  own  mind  when  I  git  it  all  told.  Shet  that 
door  —  jest  close  it  —  the  lock  is  broke  —  and 
set  down  in  that  chair,  please,  sir." 

The  major  closed  the  latchless  door  and 
took  the  one  tottery  chair.  The  girl  remained 
where  she  was,  on  the  side  of  her  bed,  her  slip 
pered  feet  dangling,  her  eyes  fixed  on  a  spot 
where  there  was  a  three-cornered  break  in  the 
dirty-gray  plastering. 

"You  know  about  Rodney  G.  Bullard,  the 
lawyer,  don't  you?  —  about  him  bein'  found 
shot  day  before  yistiddy  evenin'  in  the  mouth 
of  that  alley?"  she  asked. 

"Yes,  ma'am,"  he  said.  "Though  I  was 
not  personally  acquainted  with  the  man  him 
self,  I  am  familiar  with  the  circumstances  you 
mention." 

"Well,"  she  said,  with  a  sort  of  jerk  behind 
each  word,  "it  was  me  that  done  it!" 

"I  beg  your  pardon,"  he  said,  half  doubt- 
__ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

ing  whether  he  had  heard  aright,  "but  what 
was  it  you  said  you  did?" 

"Shot  him!"  she  answered  —  "I  was  the 
one  that  shot  him  —  with  this  thing  here." 
She  reached  one  hand  under  the  pillow  and 
drew  out  a  short-barreled,  stubby  revolver 
and  extended  it  to  him.  Mechanically  he 
took  it,  and  thereafter  for  a  space  he  held  it 
in  his  hands.  The  girl  went  straight  on,  pour 
ing  out  her  sentences  with  a  driven,  desperate 
eagerness. 

"I  didn't  mean  to  do  it,  though  —  God 
knows  I  didn't  mean  to  do  it!  He  treated  me 
mighty  sorry  —  it  was  lowdown  and  mean  all 
the  way  through,  the  way  he  done  me — but  I 
didn't  mean  him  no  real  harm.  I  was  only 
aimin'  to  skeer  him  into  doin'  the  right  thing 
by  me.  It  was  accidental-like  —  it  really  was, 
mister!  In  all  my  life  I  ain't  never  intention 
ally  done  nobody  any  harm.  And  yit  it  seems 
like  somebody's  forever  and  a  day  imposin' 
on  me!"  She  quavered  with  the  puny  pas 
sion  of  her  protest  against  the  world  that  had 
bruised  and  beaten  her  as  with  rods. 

Shocked,  stunned,  the  major  sat  in  a  daze, 
making  little  clucking  sounds  in  his  throat. 
For  once  in  his  conversational  life  he  couldn't 
think  of  the  right  words  to  say.  He  fumbled 
the  short  pistol  in  his  hands. 

"I'm  goin'  to  tell  you  the  whole  story,  jest 
like  it  was,"  she  went  on  in  her  flat  drone;  and 
the  words  she  spoke  seemed  to  come  to  him 

___ 


SMOKE     OF     BATTLE 


from  a  long  way  off.  "That  there  Rodney 
Bullard  he  tricked  me  somethin'  shameful. 
He  come  to  the  town  where  I  was  livin'  to  make 
a  speech  in  a  political  race,  and  we  got  ac 
quainted  and  he  made  up  to  me.  I  was  workin' 
in  a  hotel  there  —  one  of  the  dinin'  room  help. 
That  was  two  years  ago  this  comin'  Septem 
ber.  Well,  the  next  day,  when  he  left,  he  got 
me  to  come  'long  with  him.  He  said  he'd 
look  after  me.  I  liked  him  some  then  and  he 
talked  mighty  big  about  what  he  was  goin' 
to  do  for  me;  so  I  come  with  him.  He  told 
me  that  I  could  be  his "  She  hesitated. 

"His  amanuensis,  perhaps,"  suggested  the 
old  man. 

"Which?"  she  said.  "No;  it  wasn't  that 
way  —  he  didn't  say  nothin'  about  marryin'  me 
and  I  didn't  expect  him  to.  He  told  me  that 
I  should  be  his  girl  —  that  was  all;  but  he  didn't 
keep  his  word  —  no,  sir;  right  from  the  very 
first  he  broke  his  word,  to  me!  It  wasn't 
more'n  a  month  after  I  got  here  before  he  quit 
comin'  to  see  me  at  all.  Well,  after  that  I 
stayed  a  spell  longer  at  the  house  where  I  was 
livin'  and  then  I  went  to  another  house  —  Vic 
Magner's.  You  know  who  she  is,  I  reckin?" 

The  major  half  nodded,  half  shook  his  head. 

"By  reputation  only  I  know  the  person  in 
question,"  he  answered  a  bit  stiffly. 

"Well,"  she  went  on,  "there  ain't  so  much 
more  to  tell.  I've  been  sick  lately  —  I  had  a 
right  hard  spell.  I  ain't  got  my  strength  all 
[1651 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

back  yit.  I  was  laid  up  three  weeks,  and  last 
Monday,  when  I  was  up  and  jest  barely  able 
to  crawl  round,  Vic  Magner,  she  come  to  me 
and  told  me  that  I'd  have  to  git  out  unless 
I  could  git  somebody  to  stand  good  for  my 
board.  I  owed  her  for  three  weeks  already 
and  I  didn't  have  but  nine  dollars  to  my  name. 
I  offered  her  that,  but  she  said  she  wanted  it 
all  or  nothin'.  I  think  she  wanted  to  git  shet 
of  me  anyway.  Mister,  I  was  mighty  weak 
and  discouraged  —  I  was  so!  I  didn't  know 
what  to  do. 

"I  hadn't  seen  Rod  Bullard  for  goin'  on 
more  than  a  year,  but  he  was  the  only  one  I 
could  think  of;  so  I  slipped  out  of  the  house 
and  went  acrost  the  street  to  a  grocery  store 
where  there  was  a  pay  station,  and  I  called 
him  up  on  the  telephone  and  ast  him  to  help 
me  out  a  little.  It  wasn't  no  more  than  right 
that  he  should,  was  it,  seein'  as  he  was  respon 
sible  for  my  comin'  here?  Besides,  if  it  hadn't 
been  for  him  in  the  first  place  I  wouldn't  never 
'a'  got  into  all  that  trouble.  I  talked  with 
him  over  the  telephone  at  his  office  and  he  said 
he'd  do  somethin'  for  me.  He  said  he'd  send 
me  some  money  that  evenin'  or  else  he'd  bring 
it  round  himself.  But  he  didn't  do  neither 
one.  And  Vic  Magner,  she  kept  on  doggin' 
after  me  for  her  board  money. 

"I  telephoned  him  again  the  next  mornin'; 
but  before  I  could  say  more'n  two  words  to 
him  he  got  mad  and  told  me  to  quit  botherin' 
[  166  ] 


SMOKE     OF     BATTLE 


him,  and  he  rung  off.  That  was  day  before 
yistiddy.  When  I  got  back  to  the  house  Vic 
Magner  come  to  me,  and  I  couldn't  give  her 
no  satisfaction.  So  about  six  o'clock  in  the 
evenin'  she  made  me  pack  up  and  git  out.  I 
didn't  have  nowheres  to  go  and  only  eight 
dollars  and  ninety  cents  left — I'd  spent  a 
dime  telephoning  so,  before  I  got  out  I  took 
and  wrote  Rod  Bullard  a  note,  and  when  I  got 
outside  I  give  a  little  nigger  boy  fifteen  cents 
to  take  it  to  him.  I  told  him  in  the  note  I 
was  out  in  the  street,  without  nowheres  to 
go,  and  that  if  he  didn't  meet  me  that  night 
and  do  somethin'  for  me  I'd  jest  have  to  come 
to  his  office.  I  said  for  him  to  meet  me  at 
eight  o'clock  at  the  mouth  of  Grayson  Street 
Alley.  That  give  me  two  hours  to  wait.  I 
walked  round  and  round,  packin'  my  baggage. 

"Then  I  come  by  a  pawnstore  and  seen  a 
lot  of  pistols  in  the  window,  and  I  went  in  and 
I  bought  one  for  two  dollars  and  a  half.  The 
pawnstore  man  he  throwed  in  the  shells.  But 
I  wasn't  aimin'  to  hurt  Rod  Bullard  —  jest 
to  skeer  him.  I  was  thinkin'  some  of  killin' 
myself  too.  Then  I  walked  round  some  more 
till  I  was  plum'  wore  out. 

"When  eight  o'clock  come  I  was  waitin' 
where  I  said,  and  purty  soon  he  come  along.  As 
soon  as  he  saw  me  standin'  there  in  the  shadder 
he  bulged  up  to  me.  He  was  mighty  mad. 
He  called  me  out  of  my  name  and  said  I  didn't 

have  no  claims  on  him  —  a  whole  lot  more 
__ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

like  that  —  and  said  he  didn't  purpose  to  be 
bothered  with  me  phonin'  him  and  writin'  him 
notes  and  callin'  on  him  for  money.  I  said 
somethin'  back,  and  then  he  made  like  he 
was  goin'  to  hit  me  with  his  fist.  I'd  had 
that  pistol  in  my  hand  all  the  time,  holdin'  it 
behind  my  skirt.  And  I  pulled  it  and  I  pointed 
it  like  I  was  goin'  to  shoot  —  jest  to  skeer  him, 
though,  and  make  him  do  the  right  thing  by 
me.  I  jest  simply  pointed  it  at  him  —  that's 
all.  I  didn't  have  no  idea  it  would  go  off 
without  you  pulled  the  hammer  back  first! 

"Then  it  happened!  It  went  off  right  in 
my  hand.  And  he  said  to  me:  'Now  you've 
done  it!'  —  jest  like  that.  He  walked  away 
from  me  about  ten  feet,  and  started  to  lean 
up  aginst  a  tree,  and  then  he  fell  down  right 
smack  on  his  face.  And  I  grabbed  up  my 
baggage  and  run  away.  I  wasn't  sorry  about 
him.  I  ain't  been  sorry  about  him  a  minute 
since  —  ain't  that  funny?  But  I  was  awful 
skeered!" 

Rocking  her  body  back  and  forth  from  the 
hips,  she  put  her  hands  up  to  her  face.  Major 
Stone  stared  at  her,  his  mind  in  a  twisting 
eddy  of  confused  thoughts.  Perhaps  it  was 
the  clearest  possible  betrayal  of  his  utter  unfit- 
ness  for  his  new  vocation  in  life  that  not  until 
that  very  moment  when  the  girl  had  halted  her 
narrative  did  it  come  to  him  —  and  it  came 
then  with  a  sudden  jolt  —  that  here  he  had 
one  of  those  monumental  news  stories  for 
[168]  ~ 


SMOKE     OF     BATTLE 


which  young  Gilfoil  or  young  Webb  would  be 
willing  to  barter  his  right  arm  and  throw  in  an 
eye  for  good  measure.  It  was  a  scoop,  as 
those  young  fellows  had  called  it  —  an  exclu 
sive  confession  of  a  big  crime  —  a  thing  that 
would  mean  much  to  any  paper  and  to  any 
reporter  who  brought  it  to  his  paper.  It 
would  transform  a  failure  into  a  conspicuous 
success.  It  would  put  more  money  into  a  pay 
envelope.  And  he  had  it  all!  Sheer  luck  had 
brought  it  to  him  and  flung  it  into  his  lap. 

Nor  was  he  under  any  actual  pledge  of 
secrecy.  This  girl  had  told  it  to  him  freely, 
of  her  own  volition.  It  was  not  in  the  nature 
of  her  to  keep  her  secret.  She  had  told  it  to 
him,  a  stranger;  she  would  tell  it  to  other 
strangers  —  or  else  somebody  would  betray 
her.  And  surely  this  sickly,  slack-twisted 
little  wanton  would  be  better  off  inside  the 
strong  arm  of  the  law  than  outside  it?  No 
jury  of  Southern  men  would  convict  her  of 
murder  —  the  thought  was  incredible.  She 
would  be  kindly  dealt  with.  In  one  illuminat 
ing  flash  the  major  divined  that  these  would 
have  been  the  inevitable  conclusions  of  any 
one  of  those  ambitious  young  men  at  the 
office.  He  bent  forward. 

"What  did  you  do  then,  ma'am?"  he  asked. 

"I  didn't  know  what  to  do,"  she  said,  drop 
ping  her  hands  into  her  lap.  "I  run  till  I 
couldn't  run  no  more,  and  then  I  walked  and 
walked  and  walked.  I  reckin  I  must  'a'  walked 
[169] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

ten  miles.  And  then,  when  I  was  jest  about  to 
drop,  I  come  past  this  house.  There  was  a 
light  burnin'  on  the  porch  and  I  could  make 
out  to  read  the  sign  on  the  door,  and  it  said 
Lodgers  Taken. 

"So  I  walked  in  and  rung  the  bell,  and  when 
the  woman  came  I  said  I'd  jest  got  here  from 
the  country  and  wanted  a  room.  She  charged 
me  two  dollars  a  week,  in  advance;  and  I 
paid  her  two  dollars  down  —  and  she  showed 
me  the  way  up  here. 

"I've  been  here  ever  since,  except  twicet 
when  I  slipped  out  to  buy  me  somethin'  to  eat 
at  a  grocery  store  and  to  git  some  newspapers. 
At  first  I  figgered  the  police  would  be  a-comin' 
after  me;  but  they  didn't  —  there  wasn't 
nobody  at  all  seen  the  shoo  tin',  I  reckin.  And 
I  was  skeered  Vic  Magner  might  tell  on  me; 
but  I  guess  she  didn't  want  to  run  no  risk  of 
gittin'  in  trouble  herself  —  that  Captain  Bren- 
nan,  of  the  Second  Precinct,  he's  been  threat- 
enin'  to  run  her  out  of  town  the  first  good 
chance  he  got.  And  there  wasn't  none  of  the 
other  girls  there  that  knowed  I  ever  knew  Rod 
Bullard.  So,  you  see,  I  ain't  been  arrested 

yit. 

"Layin'  here  yistiddy  all  day,  with  nothin' 
to  do  but  think  and  cry,  I  made  up  my  mind 
I'd  kill  myself.  I  tried  to  do  it.  I  took  that 
there  pistol  out  and  I  put  it  up  to  my  head 
and  I  said  to  myself  that  all  I  had  to  do  was 

jest  to  pull  on  that  trigger  thing  and  it  wouldn't 
[17Q] 


SMOKE     OF     BATTLE 


hurt  me  but  a  secont  —  and  maybe  not  that 
long.  But  I  couldn't  do  it,  mister  —  I  jest 
couldn't  do  it  at  all.  It  seemed  like  I  wanted 
to  die,  and  yit  I  wanted  to  live  too.  All  my 
life  I've  been  jest  that  way  —  first  thinkin' 
about  doin'  one  thing  and  then  another,  and 
hardly  ever  doin'  either  one  of  'em. 

"Here  on  this  bed  tonight  I  got  to  thinkin' 
if  I  could  jest  tell  somebody  about  it  that  maybe 
after  that  I'd  feel  easier  in  my  mind.  And 
right  that  very  minute  you  come  and  knocked 
on  the  door,  and  I  knowed  it  was  a  sign  —  I 
knowed  you  was  the  one  for  me  to  tell  it  to. 
And  so  I've  done  it,  and  already  I  think  I 
feel  a  little  bit  easier  in  my  mind.  And  so 
that's  all,  mister.  But  I  wisht  please  you'd 
take  that  pistol  away  with  you  when  you  go 
—  I  don't  never  want  to  see  it  again  as  long 
as  I  live." 

She  paused,  huddling  herself  in  a  heap  upon 
the  bed.  The  major's  short  arm  made  a  ges 
ture  toward  the  cheap  suitcase. 

"I  observe,"  he  said,  "that  your  portman 
teau  is  packed  as  if  for  a  journey.  Were  you 
thinking  of  leaving,  may  I  ask?" 

"My  which?"  she  said.  "Oh,  you  mean 
my  baggage!  Yes;  I  ain't  never  unpacked  it 
since  I  come  here.  I  was  aimin'  to  go  back  to 
my  home — I  got  a  stepsister  livin' there  and  she 
might  take  me  in  —  only  after  payin'  for  this 
room  I  ain't  got  quite  enough  money  to  take 

me  there;   and  now  I  don't  know  as  I  want  to 
__ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

go,  either.  If  I  kin  git  my  strength  back  I 
might  stay  on  here  —  I  kind  of  like  city  life. 
Or  I  might  go  up  to  Cincinnati.  A  girl  that 
I  used  to  know  here  is  livin'  there  now  and 
she  wrote  to  me  a  couple  of  times,  and  I  know 
her  address  —  it  was  backed  on  the  envelope. 
Still,  I  ain't  sure  —  my  plans  ain't  all  made 
yit.  Sometimes  I  think  I'll  give  myself  up, 
but  most  generally  I  think  I  won't.  I've  got 
to  do  somethin'  purty  soon  though,  one  way  or 
another,  because  I  ain't  got  but  a  little  over 
three  dollars  left  out  of  what  I  had." 

She  sank  her  head  in  the  pillow  wearily, 
with  her  face  turned  away  from  him.  The 
major  stood  up.  Into  his  side  coat  pocket  he 
slipped  the  revolver  that  had  snuffed  out  the 
late  and  unsavory  Rodney  Bullard's  light  of 
life,  and  from  his  trousers  pocket  he  slowly 
drew  forth  his  supply  of  ready  money.  He 
had  three  silver  dollars,  one  quarter,  one  dime, 
and  a  nickel  —  three-forty  in  all.  Contem 
plating  the  disks  of  metal  in  the  palm  of  his 
hand,  he  did  a  quick  sum  in  mental  arith 
metic.  This  was  Thursday  night  now.  Sat 
urday  afternoon  at  two  he  would  draw  a  pay 
envelope  containing  twelve  dollars.  Mean 
time  he  must  eat.  Well,  if  he  stinted  himself 
closely  a  dollar  might  be  stretched  to  bridge 
the  gap  until  Saturday.  The  major  had 
learned  a  good  deal  about  the  noble  art  of 
stinting  these  last  few  weeks. 

On  the  coverlet  alongside  the  girl  he  softly 
[TO]  " 


SMOKE     OF     BATTLE 


piled  two  of  the  silver  dollars  and  the  forty 
cents  in  change.  Then,  after  a  momentary 
hesitation,  he  put  down  the  third  silver  dol 
lar,  gathered  up  the  forty  cents,  slid  it  gently 
into  his  pocket  and  started  for  the  door,  the 
loose  planks  creaking  under  his  tread.  At  the 
threshold  he  halted. 

"Good  night,  Miss  La  Mode,"  he  said.  "I 
trust  your  night's  repose  may  be  restful  and 
refreshing  to  you,  ma'am." 

She  lifted  her  face  from  the  pillow  and 
spoke,  without  turning  to  look  at  him. 

"Mister,"  she  said,  "I've  told  you  the  whole 
truth  about  that  thing  and  I  ain't  goin'  to  lie 
to  you  about  anythin'  else.  I  didn't  come 
from  Indianapolis,  Indiana,  like  I  told  you. 
My  home  is  in  Swainboro',  this  state  —  a 
little  town.  You  might  know  where  it  is? 
And  my  real  name  ain't  La  Mode,  neither. 
I  taken  it  out  of  a  book — the  La  Mode  part — 
and  I  always  did  think  Blanche  was  an  awful 
sweet  name  for  a  girl.  But  my  real  name  is 
Gussie  Stammer.  Good  night,  mister.  I'm 
much  obliged  to  you  fer  listenin',  and  I  ain't 
goin'  to  disturb  you  no  more  with  my  cryin' 
if  I  kin  help  it." 

As  the  major  gently  closed  her  door  behind 
him  he  heard  her  give  a  long,  sleepy  sigh,  like 
a  tired  child.  Back  in  his  own  room  he  glanced 
about  him,  meanwhile  feeling  himself  over  for 
writing  material.  He  found  in  his  pockets  a 
pencil  and  a  couple  of  old  letters,  whereas  he 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

knew  he  needed  a  big  sheaf  of  copy  paper  for 
the  story  he  had  to  write.  Anyway,  there  was 
no  place  here  to  do  an  extended  piece  of  writ 
ing  —  no  desk  and  no  comfortable  chair.  The 
office  would  be  a  much  better  place. 

The  office  was  only  a  matter  of  two  or  three 
blocks  away.  The  negro  watchman  would  be 
there;  he  stayed  on  duty  all  night.  Using  the 
corner  of  his  washstand  for  a  desk,  the  major 
set  down  his  notes  -^-  names,  places,  details, 
dates  —  upon  the  backs  of  his  two  letters. 
This  done,  he  settled  his  ancient  hat  on  his 
head,  picked  up  his  cane,  and  in  another  min 
ute  was  tiptoeing  down  the  stairs  and  out  the 
front  doorway.  Once  outside,  his  tread  took 
on  the  brisk  emphasis  of  one  set  upon  an 
important  task  and  in  a  hurry  to  do  it. 

Ten  minutes  later  Major  Stone  sat  at  his 
desk  in  the  empty  city  room  of  the  Evening 
Press.  Except  for  Henry,  the  old  black  night 
watchman,  there  was  no  other  person  in  the 
building  anywhere.  Just  over  his  head  an 
incandescent  bulb  blazed,  bringing  out  in  strong 
relief  the  major's  intent  old  face,  mullioned 
with  crisscross  lines.  A  cedar  pencil,  newly 
sharpened,  was  in  his  fingers;  under  his  right 
hand  was  a  block  of  clean  copy  paper.  His 
notes  lay  in  front  of  him,  the  little  stubnosed 
pistol  serving  as  a  paper  weight  to  hold  the 
two  wrinkled  envelopes  flat.  Through  the  loop 
of  the  trigger  guard  the  words,  Gussie  Stam- 
[  174  ] 


SMOKE     OF     BATTLE 


mer,  alias  Blanche  La  Mode,  showed.  Every 
thing  was  ready. 

The  major  hesitated,  though.  He  read 
justed  his  paper  and  fidgeted  his  pencil.  He 
scratched  his  head  and  pulled  at  the  little  tuft 
of  goatee  under  his  lower  lip.  Like  many 
a  more  experienced  author,  Major  Stone  was 
having  trouble  getting  under  way.  He  had  his 
own  ideas  about  a  fitting  introductory  para 
graph.  Coming  along,  he  had  thought  up  a 
full  sonorous  one,  with  a  biblical  injunction 
touching  on  the  wages  of  sin  embodied  in  it; 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  there  was  to  be  borne 
in  mind  the  daily-dinned  injunction  of  Devore 
that  every  important  news  item  should  begin 
with  a  sentence  in  which  the  whole  story  was 
summed  up.  Finally  Major  Stone  made  a  be 
ginning.  He  covered  nearly  a  sheet  of  paper. 

Then,  becoming  suddenly  dissatisfied  with 
it,  he  tore  up  what  he  had  written  and  started 
all  over  again,  only  to  repeat  the  same  opera 
tion.  Two  salty  drops  rolled  down  his  face 
and  fell  upon  the  paper,  and  instantly  little 
twin  blistered  blobs  like  tearmarks  appeared 
on  its  clear  surface.  They  were  not  tears, 
though  —  they  were  drops  of  sweat  wrung 
from  the  major's  brow  by  the  pains  of  creation. 
Again  he  poised  his  pencil  and  again  he  halted 
it  in  the  air — he  needed  inspiration.  His  gaze 
rested  absently  upon  the  pistol;  absently  he 
picked  it  up  and  began  examining  it. 

It  was  a  cheap,  rusted,  second-hand  thing, 

___ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

poorly  made,  but  no  doubt  deadly  enough  at 
close  range.  He  unbreeched  it  and  spun  the 
cylinder  with  his  thumb  and  spilled  the  con 
tents  into  his  palm  —  four  loaded  shells,  suety 
and  slick  with  grease,  and  one  that  had  been 
recently  fired;  and  it  was  discolored  and 
flattened  a  trifle.  Each  of  the  four  loaded 
shells  had  a  small  cap  like  a  little  round  star 
ing  eye  set  in  the  exact  center  of  its  flanged 
butt-end,  but  the  eye  of  the  fifth  shell  was 
punched  in.  He  turned  the  empty  weapon  in 
his  hands,  steadying  its  mechanism,  and  as 
he  did  so  a  scent  of  burnt  powder,  stale  and 
dead,  came  to  him  out  of  the  fouled  muzzle. 
He  wrinkled  his  nose  and  sniffed  at  it. 

It  had  been  many  a  long  day  since  the  major 
had  had  that  smell  in  his  nostrils  —  many  a 
long,  long  day.  But  there  had  been  a  time 
when  it  was  familiar  enough  to  him.  Even 
now  it  brought  the  clamoring  memories  of  that 
far  distant  time  back  to  him,  fresh  and  vivid. 
It  stimulated  his  imagination,  quickening  his 
mind  with  big  thoughts.  It  recalled  those 
four  years  when  he  had  fought  for  a  principle, 
and  had  kept  on  fighting  even  when  the  sub 
stance  of  the  thing  he  fought  for  was  gone 
and  there  remained  but  the  empty  husks.  It 
recalled  those  last  few  hopeless  months  when 
the  forlorn  hope  had  become  indeed  a  lost 
cause;  when  the  forty  cents  he  now  carried  in 
his  pocket  would  have  seemed  a  fortune;  when 
the  sorry  house  where  he  lodged  now  would 
[176] 


SMOKE     OF     BATTLE 


have  seemed  a  palace;  when,  without  pros 
pect  or  hope  of  reward  or  victory,  he  had  piled 
risk  upon  risk,  had  piled  sacrifice  upon  sacri 
fice,  and  through  it  all  had  borne  it  all  with 
out  whimper  or  complaint  —  fighting  the  good 
fight  like  a  soldier,  keeping  the  faith  like  a 
gentleman.  It  was  the  Smoke  of  Battle! 

The  major  had  his  inspiration  now,  right 
enough.  He  knew  just  what  he  would  write; 
knew  just  how  he  would  write  it.  He  laid 
down  the  pistol  and  the  shells  and  squared  off 
and  straightway  began  writing.  For  two  hours 
nearly  he  wrote  away  steadily,  rarely  changing 
or  erasing  a  word,  stopping  only  to  repoint 
the  lead  of  his  pencil.  Methodically  as  a  ma 
chine  he  covered  sheet  after  sheet  with  his  fine 
old-fashioned  script.  Never  for  one  instant 
did  he  hesitate  or  falter. 

Just  before  one  o'clock  he  finished.  The 
completed  manuscript,  each  page  of  the  twenty- 
odd  pages  properly  numbered,  lay  in  a  neat 
pile  before  him.  He  scooped  up  the  pistol 
shells  and  stored  them  in  an  inner  breast 
pocket  of  his  coat;  then  he  opened  a  drawer, 
slipped  the  emptied  revolver  well  back  under 
a  riffle  of  papers  and  clippings  and  closed  the 
drawer  and  locked  it.  His  notes  he  tore  into 
squares,  and  those  squares  into  smaller  squares 
—  and  so  on  until  the  fragments  would  tear 
no  finer,  but  fluttered  out  between  his  fingers 
in  a  small  white  shower  like  stage  snow. 

He  shoved  his  completed  narrative  back 
[177] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

under  the  roll-top  of  Devore's  desk,  where  the 
city  editor  would  see  it  the  very  first  thing 
when  he  came  to  work;  .and  as  he  straightened 
up  with  a  little  grunt  of  satisfaction  and 
stretched  his  arms  out  the  last  of  his  fine-linen 
shirts,  with  a  rending  sound,  ripped  down  the 
plaited  front,  from  collarband  almost  to  waist 
line. 

He  eyed  the  ruined  bosom  with  a  regretful 
stare,  plucking  at  the  gaping  tear  with  his 
graphite-dusted  fingers  and  shaking  his  head 
mournfully.  Yet  as  he  stepped  out  into  the 
street,  bound  for  his  lodgings,  he  jarred  his 
heels  down  upon  the  sidewalk  with  the  brisk, 
snapping  gait  of  a  man  who  has  tackled  a  hard 
job  and  has  done  it  well,  and  is  satisfied  with 
the  way  he  has  done  it. 

Under  a  large  black  head  the  major's  story 
was  printed  in  the  Fourth  of  July  edition  of 
the  Evening  Press.  It  ran  full  two  columns 
and  lapped  over  into  a  third  column.  It  was 
an  exhaustive  —  and  exhausting  —  account  of 
the  Fall  of  Vicksburg. 


[178] 


VI 

THE    EXIT    OF    ANSE 
DUGMORE 


WHEN  a  Kentucky  mountaineer  goes 
to  the  penitentiary  the  chances  are 
that  he  gets  sore  eyes  from    the 
white   walls   that   enclose  him,   or 
quick  consumption  from  the  thick  air  that  he 
breathes.     It  was  entirely  in  accordance  with 
the  run  of  his  luck  that  Anse  Dugmore  should 
get  them  both,  the  sore  eyes  first  and  then  the 
consumption. 

There  is  seldom  anything  that  is  picturesque 
about  the  man-killer  of  the  mountain  country. 
He  is  lacking  sadly  in  the  romantic  aspect 
and  the  delightfully  studied  vernacular  with 
which  an  inspired  school  of  fiction  has  invested 
our  Western  gun-fighter.  No  alluring  jingle 
of  belted  accouterment  goes  with  him,  no  gift 
of  deadly  humor  adorns  his  equally  deadly 
gun-play.  He  does  his  killing  in  an  unemotional, 
unattractive  kind  of  way,  with  absolutely  no 
regard  for  costume  or  setting.  Rarely  is  he  a 
fine  figure  of  a  man. 

[179] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

Take  Anse  Dugmore  now.  He  had  a  short- 
waisted,  thin  body  and  abnormally  long,  thin 
legs,  like  the  shadow  a  man  casts  at  sunup. 
He  didn't  have  that  steel-gray  eye  of  which 
we  so  often  read.  His  eyes  weren't  of  any 
particular  color,  and  he  had  a  straggly  mus 
tache  of  sandy  red  and  no  chin  worth  men 
tioning;  but  he  could  shoot  off  a  squirrel's 
head,  or  a  man's,  at  the  distance  of  a  consid 
erable  number  of  yards. 

Until  he  was  past  thirty  he  played  merely 
an  incidental  part  in  the  tribal  war  that  had 
raged  up  and  down  Yellow  Banks  Creek  and 
its  principal  tributary,  the  Pigeon  Roost, 
since  long  before  the  Big  War.  He  was  getting 
out  timber  to  be  floated  down  the  river  on  the 
spring  rise  when  word  came  to  him  of  an 
ambuscade  that  made  him  the  head  of  his 
immediate  clan  and  the  upholder  of  his  family's 
honor. 

"Yore  paw  an'  yore  two  brothers  was  lay- 
waid  this  mawnin'  comin'  'long  Yaller  Banks 
togither,"  was  the  message  brought  by  a  breath 
less  bearer  of  news.  "The  wimmenfolks  air 
totin'  'em  home  now.  Talt,  he  ain't  dead  yit." 

From  a  dry  spot  behind  a  log  Anse  lifted  his 
rifle  and  started  over  the  ridge  with  the  long, 
shambling  gait  of  the  born  hill-climber  that 
eats  up  the  miles.  For  this  emergency  he  had 
been  schooled  years  back  when  he  sat  by  a  wood 
fire  in  a  cabin  of  split  boards  and  listened  to 
his  crippled-up  father  reciting  the  saga  of  the 
[  180  ] 


EXIT     OF     ANSE     DUGMORE 

feud,  with  the  tally  of  this  one  killed  and  that 
one  maimed;  for  this  he  had  been  schooled 
when  he  practised  with  rifle  and  revolver 
until,  even  as  a  boy,  his  aim  had  become  as 
near  an  infallible  thing  as  anything  human 
gets  to  be;  for  this  he  had  been  schooled  still 
more  when  he  rode,  armed  and  watchful,  to 
church  or  court  or  election.  Its  coming  found 
him  ready. 

Two  days  he  ranged  the  ridges,  watching  his 
chance.  The  Tranthams  were  hard  to  find. 
They  were  barricaded  in  their  log- walled  strong 
holds,  well  guarded  in  anticipation  of  expected 
reprisals,  and  prepared  in  due  season  to  come 
forth  and  prove  by  a  dozen  witnesses,  or  two 
dozen  if  so  many  should  be  needed  to  establish 
the  alibi,  that  they  had  no  hand  in  the  mas 
sacre  of  the  Dugmores. 

But  two  days  and  nights  of  still-hunting, 
of  patiently  lying  in  wait  behind  brush  fences, 
of  noiseless,  pussy-footed  patrolling  in  likely 
places,  brought  the  survivor  of  the  decimated 
Dugmores  his  chance.  He  caught  Pegleg  Tran- 
tham  riding  down  Red  Bird  Creek  on  a  mare- 
mule.  Pegleg  was  only  a  distant  connection  of 
the  main  strain  of  the  enemy.  It  was  probable 
that  he  had  no  part  in  the  latest  murdering; 
perhaps  doubtful  that  he  had  any  prior  knowl 
edge  of  the  plot.  But  by  his  name  and  his 
blood-tie  he  was  a  Trantham,  which  was  enough. 

A  writer  of  the  Western  school  would  have 
found  little  in  this  encounter  that  was  really 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

worth  while  to  write  about.  Above  the  place 
of  the  meeting  rose  the  flank  of  the  mountain, 
scarred  with  washes  and  scantily  clothed  with 
stunted  trees,  so  that  in  patches  the  soil  showed 
through  like  the  hide  of  a  mangy  hound.  The 
creek  was  swollen  by  the  April  rains  and  ran 
bank-full  through  raw,  red  walls.  Old  Peg- 
leg  came  cantering  along  with  his  rifle  balanced 
on  the  sliding  withers  of  his  mare-mule,  for  he 
rode  without  a  saddle.  He  was  an  oldish  man 
and  fat  for  a  mountaineer.  A  ten-year-old 
nephew  rode  behind  him,  with  his  short  arms 
encircling  his  uncle's  paunch.  The  old  man 
wore  a  dirty  white  shirt  with  a  tabbed  bosom; 
a  single  shiny  white  china  button  held  the  neck 
band  together  at  the  back.  Below  the  button 
the  shirt  billowed  open,  showing  his  naked  back. 
His  wooden  leg  stuck  straight  out  to  the  side, 
its  worn  brass  tip  carrying  a  blob  of  red  mud, 
and  his  good  leg  dangled  down  straight,  with 
the  trousers  hitched  half-way  up  the  bare 
shank  and  a  soiled  white-yarn  sock  falling  down 
into  the  wrinkled  and  gaping  top  of  an  ancient 
congress  gaiter. 

From  out  of  the  woods  came  Anse  Dugmore, 
bareheaded,  crusted  to  his  knees  with  dried 
mud  and  wet  from  the  rain  that  had  been  drip 
ping  down  since  daybreak.  A  purpose  showed 
in  all  the  lines  of  his  slouchy  frame. 

Pegleg  jerked  his  rifle  up,  but  he  was  ham 
pered  by  the  boy's  arms  about  his  middle  and 
by  his  insecure  perch  upon  the  peaks  of  the 
[182] 


EXIT     OF     ANSE     DUGMORE 

slabsided  mule.  The  man  afoot  fired  before 
the  mounted  enemy  could  swing  his  gunbarrel 
into  line.  The  bullet  ripped  away  the  lower 
part  of  Pegleg's  face  and  grazed  the  cheek  of 
the  crouching  youngster  behind  him.  The 
white-eyed  nephew  slid  head  first  off  the  buck- 
jumping  mule  and  instantly  scuttled  on  all 
fours  into  the  underbrush.  The  rifle  dropped 
out  of  Trantham's  hands  and  he  lurched  for 
ward  on  the  mule's  neck,  grabbing  out  with 
blind,  groping  motions.  Dugmore  stepped 
two  paces  forward  to  free  his  eyes  of  the  smoke, 
which  eddied  back  from  his  gunmuzzle  into 
his  face,  and  fired  twice  rapidly.  The  mule 
was  bouncing  up  and  down,  sideways,  in  a  mild 
panic.  Pegleg  rolled  off  her,  as  inert  as  a  sack 
of  grits,  and  lay  face  upward  in  the  path,  with 
his  arms  wide  outspread  on  the  mud.  The 
mule  galloped  off  in  a  restrained  and  dignified 
style  until  she  was  a  hundred  yards  away, 
and  then,  having  snorted  the  smells  of  burnt 
powder  and  fresh  blood  out  of  her  nostrils, 
she  fell  to  cropping  the  young  leaves  off  the 
wayside  bushes,  mouthing  the  tender  green 
shoots  on  her  heavy  iron  bit  contentedly. 

For  a  long  minute  Anse  Dugmore  stood  in 
the  narrow  footpath,  listening.  Then  he  slid 
three  new  shells  into  his  rifle,  and  slipping  down 
the  bank  he  crossed  the  creek  on  a  jam  of 
driftwood  and,  avoiding  the  roads  that  followed 
the  little  watercourse,  made  over  the  shoulder 
of  the  mountain  for  his  cabin,  two  miles  down 
[183] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

on  the  opposite  side.  When  he  was  gone 
from  sight  the  nephew  of  the  dead  Trantham 
rolled  out  of  his  hiding  place  and  fled  up  the 
road,  holding  one  hand  to  his  wounded  cheek 
and  whimpering.  Presently  a  gaunt,  half-wild 
boar  pig,  with  his  spine  arched  like  the  moun 
tains,  came  sniffing  slowly  down  the  hill, 
pausing  frequently  to  cock  his  wedge-shaped 
head  aloft  and  fix  a  hostile  eye  on  two  turkey 
buzzards  that  began  to  swing  in  narrowing 
circles  over  one  particular  spot  on  the  bank 
of  the  creek. 

The  following  day  Anse  sent  word  to  the 
sheriff  that  he  would  be  coming  in  to  give 
himself  up.  It  would  not  have  been  etiquette 
for  the  sheriff  to  come  for  him.  He  came 
in,  well  guarded  on  the  way  by  certain  of  his 
clan,  pleaded  self-defense  before  a  friendly 
county  judge  and  was  locked  up  in  a  one-cell 
log  jail.  His  own  cousin  was  the  jailer  and 
ministered  to  him  kindly.  He  avoided  passing 
the  single  barred  window  of  the  jail  in  the  day 
time  or  at  night  when  there  was  a  light  behind 
him,  and  he  expected  to  "come  clear"  shortly, 
as  was  customary. 

But  the  Tranthams  broke  the  rules  of  the 
game.  The  circuit  judge  lived  half-way  across 
the  mountains  in  a  county  on  the  Virginia  line; 
he  was  not  an  active  partizan  of  either  side  in 
the  feud.  These  Tranthams,  disregarding  all 
the  ethics,  went  before  this  circuit  judge  and 
asked  him  for  a  change  of  venue,  and  got  it, 
[184] 


EXIT     OF     ANSE     DUGMORE 

which  was  more;  so  that  instead  of  being  tried 
in  Clayton  County  —  and  promptly  acquitted 
—  Anse  Dugmore  was  taken  to  Woodbine 
County  and  there  lodged  in  a  shiny  new  brick 
jail.  Things  were  in  process  of  change  in 
Woodbine.  A  spur  of  the  railroad  had  nosed 
its  way  up  from  the  lowlands  and  on  through 
the  Gap,  and  had  made  Loudon,  the  county- 
seat,  a  division  terminal.  Strangers  from  the 
North  had  come  in,  opening  up  the  mountains 
to  mines  and  sawmills  and  bringing  with  them 
many  swarthy  foreign  laborers.  A  young 
man  of  large  hopes  and  an  Eastern  college 
education  had  started  a  weekly  newspaper  and 
was  talking  big,  in  his  editorial  columns,  of 
a  new  order  of  things.  The  foundation  had 
even  been  laid  for  a  graded  school.  Plainly 
Woodbine  County  was  falling  out  of  touch 
with  the  century-old  traditions  of  her  sisters 
to  the  north  and  west  of  her. 

In  due  season,  then,  Anse  Dugmore  was 
brought  up  on  a  charge  of  homicide.  The 
trial  lasted  less  than  a  day.  A  jury  of  strangers 
heard  the  stories  of  Anse  himself  and  of  the 
dead  Pegleg's  white-eyed  nephew.  In  the 
early  afternoon  they  came  back,  a  wooden 
toothpick  in  each  mouth,  from  the  new  hotel 
where  they  had  just  had  a  most  satisfying 
fifty-cent  dinner  at  the  expense  of  the  common 
wealth,  and  sentenced  the  defendant,  Anderson 
Dugmore,  to  state  prison  at  hard  labor  for  the 

balance  of  his  natural  life. 

_. 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

The  sheriff  of  Woodbine  padlocked  on  Anse's 
ankles  a  set  of  leg  irons  that  had  been  made  by 
a  mountain  blacksmith  out  of  log  chains  and 
led  him  to  the  new  depot.  It  was  Anse  Dug- 
more's  first  ride  on  a  railroad  train;  also  it 
was  the  first  ride  on  any  train  for  Wyatt  Tran- 
tham,  head  of  the  other  clan,  who,  having  been 
elected  to  the  legislature  while  Anse  lay  in 
jail,  had  come  over  from  Clayton,  bound  for 
the  state  capital,  to  draw  his  mileage  and  be 
a  statesman. 

It  was  not  in  the  breed  for  the  victorious 
Trantham  to  taunt  his  hobbled  enemy  or  even 
to  look  his  way,  but  he  sat  just  across  the 
aisle  from  the  prisoner  so  that  his  ear  might 
catch  the  jangle  of  the  heavy  irons  when  Dug- 
more  moved  in  his  seat.  They  all  left  the  train 
together  at  the  little  blue-painted  Frankfort 
station,  Trantham  turning  off  at  the  first 
crossroads  to  go  where  the  round  dome  of  the 
old  capitol  showed  above  the  water-maple 
trees,  and  Dugmore  clanking  straight  ahead, 
with  a  string  of  negroes  and  boys  and  the 
sheriff  following  along  behind  him.  Under  the 
shadow  of  a  quarried-out  hillside  a  gate  opened 
in  a  high  stone  wall  to  admit  him  into  life 
membership  with  a  white-and-black-striped 
brotherhood  of  shame. 

Four  years  there  did  the  work  for  the  gang 
ling,  silent  mountaineer.  One  day,  just  before 
the  Christmas  holidays,  the  new  governor  of 
the  state  paid  a  visit  to  the  prison.  Only  his 
[186] 


EXIT     OF     ANSE     DUGMORE 

private  secretary  came  with  him.  The  warden 
showed  them  through  the  cell  houses,  the 
workshops,  the  dining  hall  and  the  walled 
yards.  It  was  a  Sunday  afternoon;  the  white 
prisoners  loafed  in  their  stockade,  the  blacks 
in  theirs.  In  a  corner  on  the  white  side,  where 
the  thin  and  skimpy  winter  sunshine  slanted 
over  the  stockade  wall,  Anse  Dugmore  was 
squatted;  merely  a  rack  of  bones  enclosed  in 
a  shapeless  covering  of  black-and-white  stripes. 
On  his  close-cropped  head  and  over  his  cheek 
bones  the  skin  was  stretched  so  tight  it  seemed 
nearly  ready  to  split.  His  eyes,  glassy  and 
bleared  with  pain,  stared  ahead  of  him  with 
a  sick  man's  fixed  stare.  Inside  his  convict's 
cotton  shirt  his  chest  was  caved  away  almost 
to  nothing,  and  from  the  collarless  neckband 
his  neck  rose  as  bony  as  a  plucked  fowl's,  with 
great,  blue  cords  in  it.  Lacking  a  coverlet  to 
pick,  his  fingers  picked  at  the  skin  on  his 
retreating  chin. 

As  the  governor  stood  in  an  arched  doorway 
watching,  the  lengthening  afternoon  shadow 
edged  along  and  covered  the  hunkered-down 
figure  by  the  wall.  Anse  tottered  to  his  feet, 
moved  a  few  inches  so  that  he  might  still  be 
in  the  sunshine,  and  settled  down  again.  This 
small  exertion  started  a  cough  that  threatened 
to  tear  him  apart.  He  drew  his  hand  across 
his  mouth  and  a  red  stain  came  away  on  the 
knotty  knuckles.  The  warden  was  a  kindly 

enough  man  in  the  ordinary  relations  of  life, 
_ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

but  nine  years  as  a  tamer  of  man-beasts  in  a 
great  stone  cage  had  overlaid  his  sympathies 
with  a  thickening  callus. 

"One  of  our  lifers  that  we  won't  have  with 
us  much  longer,"  he  said  casually,  noting  that 
the  governor's  eyes  followed  the  sick  convict. 
"When  the  con  gets  one  of  these  hill  billies 
he  goes  mighty  fast." 

"A  mountaineer,  then?"  said  the  governor. 
"What's  his  name?" 

"Dugmore,"  answered  the  warden;  "sent 
from  Clayton  County.  One  of  those  Clayton 
County  feud  fighters." 

The  governor  nodded  understandingly. 
"What  sort  of  a  record  has  he  made  here?" 

"  Oh,  fair  enough ! "  said  the  warden.  "  Those 
man-killers  from  the  mountains  generally  make 
good  prisoners.  Funny  thing  about  this  fellow, 
though.  All  the  time  he's  been  here  he  never, 
so  far  as  I  know,  had  a  message  or  a  visitor 
or  a  line  of  writing  from  the  outside.  Nor 
wrote  a  letter  out  himself.  Nor  made  friends 
with  anybody,  convict  or  guard." 

"Has  he  applied  for  a  pardon?"  asked  the 
governor. 

"Lord,  no!"  said  the  warden.  "When  he 
was  well  he  just  took  what  was  coming  to  him, 
the  same  as  he's  taking  it  now.  I  can  look  up 
his  record,  though,  if  you'd  care  to  see  it,  sir." 

"I  believe  I  should,"  said  the  governor 
quietly. 

A  spectacled  young  wife-murderer,  who 
~ ~  U88]  ~~  " 


EXIT     OF     ANSE     DUGMORE 

worked  in  the  prison  office  on  the  prison  books, 
got  down  a  book  and  looked  through  it  until 
he  came  to  a  certain  entry  on  a  certain  page. 
The  warden  was  right  —  so  far  as  the  black 
marks  of  the  prison  discipline  went,  the  friend 
less  convict's  record  showed  fair. 

"I  think,"  said  the  young  governor  to  the 
warden  and  his  secretary  when  they  had  moved 
out  of  hearing  of  the  convict  bookkeeper  — 
"  I  think  I'll  give  that  poor  devil  a  pardon  for 
a  Christmas  gift.  It's  no  more  than  a  mercy 
to  let  him  die  at  home,  if  he  has  any  home  to 
go  to." 

"I  could  have  him  brought  in  and  let  you 
tell  him  yourself,  sir,"  volunteered  the  warden. 

"No,  no,"  said  the  governor  quickly.  "I 
don't  want  to  hear  that  cough  again.  Nor 
look  on  such  a  wreck,"  he  added. 

Two  days  before  Christmas  the  warden  sent 
to  the  hospital  ward  for  No.  874.  No.  874, 
that  being  Anse  Dugmore,  came  shuffling  in 
and  kept  himself  upright  by  holding  with  one 
hand  to  the  door  jamb.  The  warden  sat 
rotund  and  impressive,  in  a  swivel  chair,  hold 
ing  in  his  hands  a  folded-up,  blue-backed 
document. 

"Dugmore,"  he  said  in  his  best  official 
manner,  "when  His  Excellency,  Governor 
Woodford,  was  here  on  Sunday  he  took  notice 
that  your  general  health  was  not  good.  So,  of  his 
own  accord,  he  has  sent  you  an  unconditional 

pardon  for  a  Christmas  gift,  and  here  it  is." 

. __ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

The  sick  convict's  eyes,  between  their  fester 
ing  lids,  fixed  on  the  warden's  face  and  a  sudden 
light  flickered  in  their  pale,  glazed  shallows; 
but  he  didn't  speak.  There  was  a  little  pause. 

"I  said  the  governor  has  given  you  a  pardon," 
repeated  the  warden,  staring  hard  at  him. 

"I  heered  you  the  fust  time,"  croaked  the 
prisoner  in  his  eaten-out  voice.  "When  kin 
I  go?" 

"Is  that  all  you've  got  to  say?"  demanded 
the  warden,  bristling  up. 

"I  said,  when  kin  I  go?"  repeated  No.  874. 

"Go!  —  you  can  go  now.  You  can't  go  too 
soon  to  suit  me!" 

The  warden  swung  his  chair  around  and 
showed  him  the  broad  of  his  indignant  back. 
When  he  had  filled  out  certain  forms  at  his 
desk  he  shoved  a  pen  into  the  silent  consump 
tive's  fingers  and  showed  him  crossly  where  to 
make  his  mark.  At  a  signal  from  his  bent 
forefinger  a  negro  trusty  came  forward  and  took 
the  pardoned  man  away  and  helped  him  put 
his  shrunken  limbs  into  a  suit  of  the  prison- 
made  slops,  of  cheap,  black  shoddy,  with  the 
taint  of  a  jail  thick  and  heavy  on  it.  A  deputy 
warden  thrust  into  Dugmore's  hands  a  railroad 
ticket  and  the  five  dollars  that  the  law  requires 
shall  be  given  to  a  freed  felon.  He  took  them 
without  a  word  and,  still  without  a  word, 
stepped  out  of  the  gate  that  swung  open  for 
him  and  into  a  light,  spitty  snowstorm.  With 
the  inbred  instinct  of  the  hillsman  he  swung 
[190J 


EXIT     OF     ANSE     DUGMORE 

about  and  headed  for  the  little,  light-blue 
station  at  the  head  of  the  crooked  street.  He 
went  slowly,  coughing  often  as  the  cold  air 
struck  into  his  wasted  lungs,  and  sometimes 
staggering  up  against  the  fences.  Through  a 
barred  window  the  wondering  warden  sourly 
watched  the  crawling,  tottery  figure. 

"Damned  savage!"  he  said  to  himself. 
"Didn't  even  say  thank  you.  I'll  bet  he  never 
had  any  more  feelings  or  sentiments  in  his  life 
than  a  moccasin  snake." 

Something  to  the  same  general  effect  was 
expressed  a  few  minutes  later  by  a  brakeman 
who  had  just  helped  a  wofully  feeble  passenger 
aboard  the  eastbound  train  and  had  steered 
him,  staggering  and  gasping  from  weakness, 
to  a  seat  at  the  forward  end  of  an  odorous  red- 
plush  day  coach. 

"Just  a  bundle  of  bones  held  together  by  a 
skin,"  the  brakeman  was  saying  to  the  con 
ductor,  "and  the  smell  of  the  pen  all  over  him. 
Never  said  a  word  to  me  —  just  looked  at  me 
sort  of  dumb.  Bound  for  plumb  up  at  the  far 
end  of  the  division,  accordin'  to  the  way  his 
ticket  reads.  I  doubt  if  he  lives  to  get  there." 

The  warden  and  the  brakeman  both  were 
wrong.  The  freed  man  did  live  to  get  there. 
And  it  was  an  emotion  which  the  warden  had 
never  suspected  that  held  life  in  him  all  that 
afternoon  and  through  the  comfortless  night  in 
the  packed  and  noisome  day  coach,  while  the 

fussy,  self -sufficient  little  train  went  looping, 
__ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

like  an  overgrown  measuring  worm,  up  through 
the  blue  grass,  around  the  outlying  knobs  of  the 
foothills,  on  and  on  through  the  great  riven 
chasm  of  the  gateway  into  a  bleak,  bare  clutch 
of  undersized  mountains.  Anse  Dugmore  had 
two  bad  hemorrhages  on  the  way,  but  he  lived. 

Under  the  full  moon  of  a  white  and  flaw 
less  night  before  Christmas,  Shem  Dugmore's 
squatty  log  cabin  made  a  blot  on  the  thin 
blanket  of  snow,  and  inside  the  one  room  of 
the  cabin  Shem  Dugmore  sat  alone  by  the 
daubed-clay  hearth,  glooming.  Hours  passed 
and  he  hardly  moved  except  to  stir  the  red 
coals  or  kick  back  some  ambitious  ember  of 
hickory  that  leaped  out  upon  the  uneven 
floor.  Suddenly  something  heavy  fell  limply 
against  the  locked  door,  and  instantly,  all 
alertness,  the  shock-headed  mountaineer  was 
backed  up  against  the  farther  wall,  out  of 
range  of  the  two  windows,  with  his  weapons 
drawn,  silent,  ready  for  what  might  come. 
After  a  minute  there  was  a  feeble,  faint  peck 
ing  sound  —  half  knock,  half  scratch  —  at  the 
lower  part  of  the  door.  It  might  have  been 
a  wornout  dog  or  any  spent  wild  creature,  but 
no  line  of  Shem  Dugmore's  figure  relaxed,  and 
under  his  thick,  sandy  brows  his  eyes,  in  the 
flickering  light,  had  the  greenish  shine  of  an 
angry  cat-animal's. 

"Whut  is  it?"  he  called.     "And  whut  do 

you  want?     Speak  out  peartly!" 
—  _ 


EXIT     OF     ANSE     DUGMORE 

The  answer  came  through  the  thick  plank 
ing  thinly,  in  a  sort  of  gasping  whine  that 
ended  in  a  chattering  cough;  but  even  after 
Shem's  ear  caught  the  words,  and  even  after 
he  recognized  the  changed  but  still  familiar 
cadence  of  the  voice,  he  abated  none  of  his 
caution.  Carefully  he  unbolted  the  door, 
and,  drawing  it  inch  by  inch  slowly  ajar,  he 
reached  out,  exposing  only  his  hand  and  arm, 
and  drew  bodily  inside  the  shell  of  a  man  that 
was  fallen,  huddled  up,  against  the  log  door 
jamb.  He  dropped  the  wooden  crossbar  back 
into  its  sockets  before  he  looked  a  second  time 
at  the  intruder,  who  had  crawled  across  the 
floor  and  now  lay  before  the  wide  mouth  of 
the  hearth  in  a  choking  spell.  Shem  Dugmore 
made  no  move  until  the  fit  was  over  and  the 
sufferer  lay  quiet. 

"How  olid  you  git  out,  Anse?"  were  the  first 
words  he  spoke. 

The  consumptive  rolled  his  head  weakly  from 
side  to  side  and  swallowed  desperately.  "Par 
doned  out  —  in  writin'  —  yistiddy." 

"You  air  in  purty  bad  shape,"  said  Shem. 

"Yes"  —  the  words  came  very  slowly  — 
"my  lungs  give  out  on  me  —  and  my  eyes. 
But  —  but  I  got  here." 

"You  come  jist  in  time,"  said  his  cousin; 
"this  time  tomorrer  and  you  wouldn't  a'  never 
found  me  here.  I'd  'a'  been  gone." 

"Gone!  —  gone  whar?" 

"Well,"  said  Shem  slowly,  "after  you  was 

__  „_ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

sent  away  it  seemed  like  them  Tranthams 
got  the  upper  hand  complete.  All  of  our  side 
whut  ain't  dead — and  that's  powerful  few — 
is  moved  off  out  of  the  mountings  to  Winches 
ter,  down  in  the  settlemints.  I'm  'bout  the 
last,  and  I'm  a-purposin'  to  slip  out  tomorrer 
night  while  the  Tranthams  is  at  their  Christ 
mas  rackets  —  they'd  lay  way  me  too  ef " 

"But  my  wife  —  did  she " 

"I  thought  maybe  you'd  heered  tell  about 
that  whilst  you  was  down  yon,"  said  Shem 
in  a  dulled  wonder.  "The  fall  after  you  was 
took  away  yore  woman  she  went  over  to  the 
Tranthams.  Yes,  sir;  she  took  up  with  the 
head  devil  of  'em  all  —  old  Wyatt  Trantham 
hisself  —  and  she  went  to  live  at  his  house  up 
on  the  Yaller  Banks." 

"Is  she Did  she " 

The  ex-convict  was  struggling  to  his  knees. 
His  groping  skeletons  of  hands  were  right  in 
the  hot  ashes.  The  heat  cooked  the  moisture 
from  his  sodden  garments  in  little  films  of 
vapor  and  filled  the  cabin  with  the  reek  of 
the  prison  dye. 

"Did  she  — did  she " 

"Oh,  she's  been  dead  quite  a  spell  now," 
stated  Shem.  "I  would  have  s'posed  you'd 
'a'  heered  that,  too,  somewhars.  She  had  a 
kind  of  a  risin'  in  the  breast." 

"But  my  young  uns  —  little  Anderson  and 
—  and  Elviry?" 

The  sick  man  was  clear  up  on  his  knees  now, 
_ 


EXIT     OF     ANSE     DUGMORE 

his  long  arms  hanging  and  his  eyes,  behind 
their  matted  lids,  fixed  on  Shem's  impassive 
face.  Could  the  warden  have  seen  him  now, 
and  marked  his  attitude  and  his  words,  he 
would  have  known  what  it  was  that  had  brought 
this  dying  man  back  to  his  own  mountain 
valley  with  the  breath  of  life  still  in  him.  A 
dumb,  unuttered  love  for  the  two  shock-headed 
babies  he  had  left  behind  in  the  split-board 
cabin  was  the  one  big  thing  in  Anse  Dugmore's 
whole  being  —  bigger  even  than  his  sense  of 
allegiance  to  the  feud. 

"My  young  uns,  Shem?" 

"Wyatt  Trantham  took  'em  and  he  kep' 
'em  —  he's  got  'em  both  now." 

"Does  he  —  does  he  use  'em  kindly?" 

"I  ain't  never  heered,"  said  Shem  simply. 
"He  never  had  no  young  uns  of  his  own,  and 
it  mout  he  be  uses  'em  well.  He's  the  high 
sheriff  now." 

"I  was  countin'  on  gittin'  to  see  'em  agin  — 
an'  buyin'  'em  some  little  Chrismus  fixin's," 
the  father  wheezed.  Hopelessness  was  coming 
into  his  rasping  whisper.  "I  reckon  it  ain't  no 
use  to  —  to  be  thinkin' — of  that  there  now?" 

"No  'arthly  use  at  all,"  said  Shem,  with 
brutal  directness.  "Ef  you  had  the  strength 
to  git  thar,  the  Tranthams  would  shoot  you 
down  like  a  fice  dog." 

Anse  nodded  weakly.     He  sank  down  again 
on  the  floor,  face  to  the  boards,  coughing  hard. 
It  was  the  droning  voice  of  his  cousin  that 
[105] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

brought  him  back  from  the  borders  of  the  coma 
he  had  been  fighting  off  for  hours. 

For,  to  Shem,  the  best  hater  and  the  poorest 
fighter  of  all  his  cleaned-out  clan,  had  come 
a  great  thought.  He  shook  the  drowsing  man 
and  roused  him,  and  plied  him  with  sips  from 
a  dipper  of  the  unhallowed  white  corn  whisky 
of  a  mountain  still-house.  And  as  he  worked 
over  him  he  told  off  the  tally  of  the  last  four 
years:  of  the  uneven,  unmerciful  war,  ticking 
off  on  his  blunt  finger  ends  the  grim  totals  of 
this  one  ambushed  and  that  one  killed  in  the 
open,  overpowered  and  beaten  under  by  weight 
of  odds.  He  told  such  details  as  he  knew  of 
the  theft  of  the  young  wife  and  the  young  ones, 
Elvira  and  little  Anderson. 

"Anse,  did  ary  Trantham  see  you  a-gittin' 
here  tonight?" 

"Nobody  —  that  knowed  me  —  seed  me." 

"Old  Wyatt  Trantham,  he  rid  into  Man 
chester  this  evenin'  'bout  f o'  o'clock  —  I  seed 
him  passin'  over  the  ridge,"  went  on  Shem. 
"He'll  be  ridin'  back  'long  Pigeon  Roost  some 
time  before  mawnin'.  He  done  you  a  heap  o' 
dirt,  Anse." 

The  prostrate  man  was  listening  hard. 

"Anse,  I  got  yore  old  rifle  right  here  in  the 
house.  Ef  you  could  git  up  thar  on  the  mount 
ing,  somewhar's  alongside  the  Pigeon  Roost 
trail,  you  could  git  him  shore.  He'll  be  full 
of  licker  comin'  back." 

And  now  a  seeming  marvel  was  coming  to 
—  [  196  ]  ~ 


EXIT     OF     ANSE     DUGMORE 

pass,  for  the  caved-in  trunk  was  rising  on  the 
pipestem  legs  and  the  shaking  fingers  were 
outstretched,  reaching  for  something. 

Shem  stepped  lightly  to  a  corner  of  the  cabin 
and  brought  forth  a  rifle  and  began  reloading 
it  afresh  from  a  box  of  shells. 

A  wavering  figure  crept  across  the  small 
stump-dotted  "dead'ning" —  Anse  Dugmore 
was  upon  his  errand.  He  dragged  the  rifle 
by  the  barrel,  so  that  its  butt  made  a  crooked, 
broken  furrow  in  the  new  snow  like  the  trail 
of  a  crippled  snake.  He  fell  and  got  up,  and 
fell  and  rose  again.  He  coughed  and  up  the 
ridge  a  ranging  dog-fox  barked  back  an  answer 
to  his  cough. 

From  out  of  the  slitted  door  Shem  watched 
him  until  the  scrub  oaks  at  the  edge  of  the 
clearing  swallowed  him  up.  Then  Shem  fas 
tened  himself  in  and  made  ready  to  start  his 
flight  to  the  lowlands  that  very  night. 

Just  below  the  forks  of  Pigeon  Roost  Creek 
the  trail  that  followed  its  banks  widened  into 
a  track  wide  enough  for  wagon  wheels.  On 
one  side  lay  the  diminished  creek,  now  filmed 
over  with  a  glaze  of  young  ice.  On  the  other 
the  mountain  rose  steeply.  Fifteen  feet  up 
the  bluff  side  a  fallen  dead  tree  projected  its 
rotted,  broken  roots,  like  snaggled  teeth,  from 
the  clayey  bank.  Behind  this  tree's  trunk,  in 

the  snow  and  half -frozen,  half -melted  yellow 
_ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

mire,  Anse  Dugmore  was  stretched  on  his  face. 
The  barrel  of  the  rifle  barely  showed  itself 
through  the  interlacing  root  ends.  It  pointed 
downward  and  northward  toward  the  broad, 
moonlit  place  in  the  road.  Its  stock  was 
pressed  tightly  against  Anse  Dugmore's  fallen- 
in  cheek;  the  trigger  ringer  of  his  right  hand, 
fleshless  as  a  joint  of  cane,  was  crooked  about 
the  trigger  guard.  A  thin  stream  of  blood 
ran  from  his  mouth  and  dribbled  down  his  chin 
and  coagulated  in  a  sticky  smear  upon  the  gun 
stock.  His  lungs,  what  was  left  of  them,  were 
draining  away. 

He  lay  without  motion,  saving  up  the  last 
ounce  of  his  life.  The  cold  had  crawled  up 
his  legs  to  his  hips;  he  was  dead  already  from 
the  waist  down.  He  no  longer  coughed,  only 
gasped  thickly.  He  knew  that  he  was  about 
gone;  but  he  knew,  too,  that  he  would  last, 
clear-minded  and  clear-eyed,  until  High  Sheriff 
Wyatt  Trantham  came.  His  brain  would  last 
—  and  his  trigger  finger. 

Then  he  heard  him  coming.  Up  the  trail 
sounded  the  muffled  music  of  a  pacer's  hoofs 
single-footing  through  the  snow,  and  after 
that,  almost  instantly  Trantham  rode  out  into 
sight  and  loomed  larger  and  larger  as  he  drew 
steadily  near  the  open  place  under  the  bank. 
He  was  wavering  in  the  saddle.  He  drew  nearer 
and  nearer,  and  as  he  came  out  on  the  wide 
patch  of  moonlit  snow,  he  pulled  the  single- 
footer  down  to  a  walk  and  halted  him  and 
[198] 


EXIT     OF     ANSE     DUGMORE 

began  fumbling  in  the  right-hand  side  of  the 
saddlebags  that  draped  his  horse's  shoulder. 

Up  in  its  covert  the  rifle  barrel  moved  an 
inch  or  two,  then  steadied  and  stopped,  the 
bone-sight  at  its  tip  resting  full  on  the  broad 
of  the  drunken  rider's  breast.  The  bony 
finger  moved  inward  from  the  trigger  guard 
and  closed  ever  so  gently  about  the  touchy,  hair- 
filed  trigger  —  then  waited. 

For  the  uncertain  hand  of  Trantham,  every 
movement  showing  plain  in  the  crystal,  hard, 
white  moon,  was  slowly  bringing  from  under 
the  flap  of  the  right-side  saddlebag  something 
that  was  round  and  smooth  and  shone  with  a 
yellowish  glassy  light,  like  a  fat  flask  filled 
with  spirits.  And  Anse  Dugmore  waited,  being 
minded  now  to  shoot  him  as  he  put  the  bottle 
to  his  lips,  and  so  cheat  Trantham  of  his  last 
drink  on  earth,  as  Trantham  had  cheated  him 
of  his  liberty  and  his  babies  —  as  Trantham 
had  cheated  those  babies  of  the  Christmas 
fixings  which  the  state's  five  dollars  might  have 
bought. 

He  waited,  waited 

This  was  not  the  first  time  the  high  sheriff 
had  stopped  that  night  on  his  homeward  ride 
from  the  tiny  county  seat,  as  his  befuddle- 
ment  proclaimed;  but  halting  there  in  the 
open,  just  past  the  forks  of  the  Pigeon  Roost, 
he  was  moved  by  a  new  idea.  He  fumbled 
in  the  right-hand  flap  of  his  saddlebags  and 
[199] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

brought  out  a  toy  drum,  round  and  smooth, 
with  shiny  yellow  sides.  A  cheap  china  doll 
with  painted  black  ringlets  and  painted  blue 
eyes  followed  the  drum,  and  then  a  torn  paper 
bag,  from  which  small  pieces  of  cheap  red-and- 
green  dyed  candy  sifted  out  between  the 
sheriff's  fumbling  fingers  and  fell  into  the  snow. 

Thirty  feet  away,  in  the  dead  leaves  matted 
under  the  roots  of  an  uptorn  dead  tree,  some 
thing  moved  —  something  moved;  and  then 
there  was  a  sound  like  a  long,  deep,  gurgling 
sigh,  and  another  sound  like  some  heavy, 
lengthy  object  settling  itself  down  flat  upon 
the  snow  and  the  leaves. 

The  first  faint  rustle  cleared  Trantham's 
brain  of  the  liquor  fumes.  He  jammed  the 
toys  and  the  candy  back  into  the  saddlebags 
and  jerked  his  horse  side  wise  into  the  protect 
ing  shadow  of  the  bluff,  reaching  at  the  same 
time  to  the  shoulder  holster  buckled  about 
his  body  under  the  unbuttoned  overcoat.  For  a 
long  minute  he  listened  keenly,  the  drawn  pistol 
in  his  hand.  There  was  nothing  to  hear  except 
his  own  breathing  and  the  breathing  of  his  horse. 

"Sho!  Some  old  hawg  turnin'  over  in  her 
bed,"  he  said  to  the  horse,  and  holstering 
the  pistol  he  went  racking  on  down  Pigeon 
Roost  Creek,  with  Christmas  for  Elviry  and 
little  Anderson  in  his  saddlebags. 

When    they   found   Anse   Dugmore   in   his 

ambush  another  snow  had  fallen  on  his  back 
__ 


EXIT     OF     ANSE     DUGMORE 

and  he  was  slightly  more  of  a  skeleton  than 
ever;  but  the  bony  finger  was  still  crooked 
about  the  trigger,  the  rusted  hammer  was  back 
at  full  cock  and  there  was  a  dried  brownish 
stain  on  the  gun  stock.  So,  from  these  facts, 
his  finders  were  moved  to  conclude  that  the 
freed  convict  must  have  bled  to  death  from 
his  lungs  before  the  sheriff  ever  passed,  which 
they  held  to  be  a  good  thing  all  round  and  a 
lucky  thing  for  the  sheriff. 


201 


VII 

THE    EDITOR    OF    THE 

SUN 


was  a  sound,  heard  in  the  early 
hours  of  a  Sunday  morning,  that  used 
to  bother  strangers  in  our  town  until 
they  got  used  to  it.  It  started  usually 
along  about  half  past  five  or  six  o'clock  and  it 
kept  up  interminably  —  so  it  seemed  to  them 
—  a  monotonous,  jarring  thump-thump,  thump- 
thump  that  was  like  the  far-off  beating  of 
African  tomtoms;  but  at  breakfast,  when  the 
beaten  biscuits  came  upon  the  table,  throwing 
off  a  steamy  hot  halo  of  their  own  goodness, 
these  aliens  knew  what  it  was  that  had  roused 
them,  and,  unless  they  were  dyspeptics  by 
nature,  felt  amply  recompensed  for  the  lost 
hours  of  their  beauty  sleep. 

In  these  degenerate  latter  days  I  believe 
there  is  a  machine  that  accomplishes  the  same 
purpose  noiselessly  by  a  process  of  rolling  and 
crushing,  which  no  doubt  is  efficacious;  but 
it  seems  somehow  to  take  the  poetry  out  of 


TO     THE     EDITOR     OF     THE     SUN 

the  operation.  Old  Judge  Priest,  our  circuit 
judge,  and  the  reigning  black  deity  of  his 
kitchen,  Aunt  Dilsey  Turner,  would  have 
naught  of  it.  So  long  as  his  digestion  survived 
and  her  good  right  arm  held  out  to  endure, 
there  would  be  real  beaten  biscuits  for  the 
judge's  Sunday  morning  breakfast.  And  so, 
having  risen  with  the  dawn  or  a  little  later, 
Aunt  Dilsey,  wielding  a  maul-headed  tool  of 
whittled  wood,  would  pound  the  dough  with 
rhythmic  strokes  until  it  was  as  plastic  as 
sculptor's  modeling  clay  and  as  light  as  eider 
down,  full  of  tiny  hills  and  hollows,  in  which 
small  yeasty  bubbles  rose  and  spread  and  burst 
like  foam  globules  on  the  flanks  of  gentle  wave 
lets.  Then,  with  her  master  hand,  she  would 
roll  it  thin  and  cut  out  the  small  round  disks 
and  delicately  pink  each  one  with  a  fork  — 
and  then,  if  you  were  listening,  you  could  hear 
the  stove  door  slam  like  the  smacking  of  an 
iron  lip. 

On  a  certain  Sunday  I  have  in  mind,  Judge 
Priest  woke  with  the  first  premonitory  thud 
from  the  kitchen,  and  he  was  up  and  dressed 
in  his  white  linens  and  out  upon  the  wide  front 
porch  while  the  summer  day  was  young  and 
unblemished.  The  sun  was  not  up  good  yet. 
It  made  a  red  glow,  like  a  barn  afire,  through 
the  treetops  looking  eastward.  Lie-abed  black 
birds  were  still  talking  over  family  matters 
in  the  maples  that  clustered  round  the  house, 
and  in  the  back  yard  Judge  Priest's  big  red 
[203] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

rooster  hoarsely  circulated  gossip  in  regard  to 
a  certain  little  brown  hen,  first  crowing  out 
the  news  loudly  and  then  listening,  with  his 
head  on  one  side,  while  the  rooster  in  the  next 
yard  took  it  up  and  repeated  it  to  a  rooster 
living  farther  down  the  road,  as  is  the  cus 
tom  among  male  scandalizers  the  world  over. 
Upon  the  lawn  the  little  gossamer  hammocks 
that  the  grass  spiders  had  seamed  together 
overnight  were  spangled  with  dew,  so  that 
each  out-thrown  thread  was  a  glittering  rosary 
and  the  center  of  each  web  a  silken,  cushioned 
jewel  casket.  Likewise  each  web  was  outlined 
in  white  mist,  for  the  cottonwood  trees  were 
shedding  down  their  podded  product  so  thickly 
that  across  open  spaces  the  slanting  lines  of 
the  drifting  fiber  looked  like  snow.  It  would 
be  hot  enough  after  a  while,  but  now  the  whole 
world  was  sweet  and  fresh  and  washed  clean. 

It  impressed  Judge  Priest  so.  He  lowered 
his  bulk  into  a  rustic  chair  made  of  hickory 
withes  that  gave  to  his  weight,  and  put  his 
thoughts  upon  breakfast  and  the  goodness  of 
the  day;  but  presently,  as  he  sat  there,  he  saw 
something  that  set  a  frown  between  his  faded 
blue  eyes. 

He  saw,  coming  down  Clay  Street,  upon  the 
opposite  side,  an  old  man  —  a  very  feeble  old 
man  —  who  was  tall  and  thin  and  dressed  in 
somber  black.  The  man  was  lame  —  he 
dragged  one  leg  along  with  the  hitching  gait 

of  the  paralytic.     Traveling  with  painful  slow- 
_. 


TO     THE     EDITOR     OF     THE     SUN 

ness,  he  came  on  until  he  reached  the  corner 
above.  Then  automatically  he  turned  at  right 
angles  and  left  the  narrow  wooden  sidewalk 
and  crossed  the  dusty  road.  He  passed  Judge 
Priest's,  looking  neither  to  the  right  nor  the 
left,  and  so  kept  on  until  he  reached  the  corner 
below.  Still  following  an  invisible  path  in 
the  deep-furrowed  dust,  he  crossed  again  to 
the  other  side.  Just  as  he  got  there  his  halt 
leg  seemed  to  give  out  altogether  and  for  a 
minute  or  two  he  stood  holding  himself  up  by 
a  fumbling  grip  upon  the  slats  of  a  tree  box 
before  he  went  laboriously  on,  a  figure  of  pain 
and  weakness  in  the  early  sunshine  that  was 
now  beginning  to  slant  across  his  path  and 
dapple  his  back  with  checkerings  of  shadow 
and  light. 

This  maneuver  was  inexplicable  —  a  stranger 
would  have  puzzled  to  make  it  out.  The 
shade  was  as  plentiful  upon  one  side  of  Clay 
Street  as  upon  the  other;  each  sagged  wooden 
sidewalk  was  in  as  bad  repair  as  its  brother 
over  the  way.  The  small,  shabby  frame 
house,  buried  in  honeysuckles  and  balsam 
vines,  which  stood  close  up  to  the  pavement 
line  on  the  opposite  side  of  Clay  Street,  facing 
Judge  Priest's  roomy  and  rambling  old  home, 
had  no  flag  of  pestilence  at  its  door  or  its 
window.  And  surely  to  this  lone  pedestrian 
every  added  step  must  have  been  an  added 
labor.  A  stranger  would  never  have  under- 

stood  it;   but  Judge  Priest  understood  it  —  he 
__ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

had  seen  that  same  thing  repeated  countless 
times  in  the  years  that  stretched  behind  him. 
Always  it  had  distressed  him  inwardly,  but 
on  this  particular  morning  it  distressed  him 
more  than  ever.  The  toiling  grim  figure  in 
black  had  seemed  so  feeble  and  so  tottery  and 
old. 

Well,  Judge  Priest  was  not  exactly  what  you 
would  call  young.  With  an  effort  he  heaved 
himself  up  out  of  the  depths  of  his  hickory 
chair  and  stood  at  the  edge  of  his  porch,  polish 
ing  a  pink  bald  dome  of  forehead  as  though 
trying  to  make  up  his  mind  to  something. 
Jefferson  Poindexter,  resplendent  in  starchy 
white  jacket  and  white  apron,  came  to  the 
door. 

"Breakfus'  served,  suh!"  he  said,  giving  to  an 
announcement  touching  on  food  that  glamour 
of  grandeur  of  which  his  race  alone  enjoys  the 
splendid  secret. 

"Hey?"  asked  the  judge  absently. 

"Breakfus' —  hit's  on  the  table  waitin', 
suh,"  stated  Jeff.  "Mizz  Polks  sent  over  her 
houseboy  with  a  dish  of  fresh  razberries  fur 
yore  breakfus';  and  she  say  to  tell  you,  with 
her  and  Mistah  Polkses'  compliments,  they  is 
fresh  picked  out  of  her  garden  —  specially 
fur  you." 

The  lady  and  gentleman  to  whom  Jeff  had 

reference  were  named  Polk,  but  in  speaking  of 

white  persons  for  whom  he  had  a  high  regard 

Jeff  always,  wherever  possible  within  the  limi- 

[206] 


TO     THE     EDITOR     OF     THE     SUN 

tations  of  our  speech,  tacked  on  that  final  s. 
It  was  in  the  nature  of  a  delicate  verbal  com 
pliment,  implying  that  the  person  referred  to 
was  worthy  of  enlargement  and  pluralization. 

Alone  in  the  cool,  high-ceiled,  white-walled 
dining  room,  Judge  Priest  ate  his  breakfast 
mechanically.  The  raspberries  were  pink  beads 
of  sweetness;  the  young  fried  chicken  was  a 
poem  in  delicate  and  flaky  browns;  the  spoon 
bread  could  not  have  been  any  better  if  it  had 
tried;  and  the  beaten  biscuits  were  as  light  as 
snowflakes  and  as  ready  to  melt  on  the  tongue; 
but  Judge  Priest  spoke  hardly  a  word  all  through 
the  meal.  Jeff,  going  out  to  the  kitchen  for 
the  last  course,  said  to  Aunt  Dilsey: 

"Ole  boss-man  seem  lak  he's  got  somethin' 
on  his  mind  worryin'  him  this  mawnin'." 

When  Jeff  returned,  with  a  turn  of  crisp 
waffles  in  one  hand  and  a  pitcher  of  cane  sirup 
in  the  other,  he  stared  in  surprise,  for  the 
dining  room  was  empty  and  he  could  hear  his 
employer  creaking  down  the  hall.  Jeff  just 
naturally  hated  to  see  good  hot  waffles  going  to 
waste.  He  ate  them  himself,  standing  up ;  and 
they  gave  him  a  zest  for  his  regular  breakfast, 
which  followed  in  due  course  of  time. 

From  the  old  walnut  hatrack,  with  its  white- 
tipped  knobs  that  stood  just  inside  the  front 
door,  Judge  Priest  picked  up  a  palmleaf  fan; 
and  he  held  the  fan  slantwise  as  a  shield  for 
his  eyes  and  his  bare  head  against  the  sun's 
glare  as  he  went  down  the  porch  steps  and 
[207] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

passed  out  of  his  own  yard,  traversed  the 
empty  street  and  strove  with  the  stubborn 
gate  latch  of  the  little  house  that  faced  his 
own.  It  was  a  poor-looking  little  house,  and 
its  poorness  had  extended  to  its  surroundings 
— as  if  poverty  was  a  contagion  that  spread. 
In  Judge  Priest's  yard,  now,  the  grass,  though 
uncared  for,  yet  grew  thick  and  lush;  but 
here,  in  this  small  yard,  there  were  bare,  shiny 
spots  of  earth  showing  through  the  grass  — 
as  though  the  soil  itself  was  out  at  elbows  and 
the  nap  worn  off  its  green-velvet  coat;  but 
the  vines  about  the  porch  were  thick  enough 
for  an  ambuscade  and  from  behind  their  green 
screen  came  a  voice  in  hospitable  recognition. 

"Is  that  you,  judge?  Well  sir,  I'm  glad  to 
see  you!  Come  right  in;  take  a  seat  and  sit 
down  and  rest  yourself." 

The  speaker  showed  himself  in  the  arched 
opening  of  the  vine  barrier  —  an  old  man  — 
not  quite  so  old,  perhaps,  as  the  judge.  He 
was  in  his  shirtsleeves.  There  was  a  patch 
upon  one  of  the  sleeves.  His  shoes  had  been 
newly  shined,  but  the  job  was  poorly  done; 
the  leather  showed  a  dulled  black  upon  the 
toes  and  a  weathered  yellow  at  the  sides  and 
heels.  As  he  spoke  his  voice  ran  up  and  down 
—  the  voice  of  a  deaf  person  who  cannot  hear 
his  own  words  clearly,  so  that  he  pitches  them 
in  a  false  key.  For  added  proof  of  this  afflic 
tion  he  held  a  lean  and  slightly  tremulous  hand 

cupped  behind  his  ear. 

[208] 


TO     THE     EDITOR     OF     THE     SUN 

The  other  hand  he  extended  in  greeting  as 
the  old  judge  mounted  the  step  of  the  low 
porch.  The  visitor  took  one  of  two  creaky 
wooden  rockers  that  stood  in  the  narrow  space 
behind  the  balsam  vines,  and  for  a  minute  or 
two  he  sat  without  speech,  fanning  himself. 
Evidently  these  neighborly  calls  between  these 
two  old  men  were  not  uncommon;  they  could 
enjoy  the  communion  of  silence  together  with 
out  embarrassment. 

The  town  clocks  struck  —  first  the  one  on 
the  city  hall  struck  eight  times  sedately,  and 
then,  farther  away,  the  one  on  the  county 
courthouse.  This  one  struck  five  times  slowly, 
hesitated  a  moment,  struck  eleven  times  with 
great  vigor,  hesitated  again,  struck  once  with 
a  big,  final  boom,  and  was  through.  No 
amount  of  repairing  could  cure  the  courthouse 
clock  of  this  peculiarity.  It  kept  the  time,  but 
kept  it  according  to  a  private  way  of  its  own. 
Immediately  after  it  ceased  the  bell  on  the 
Catholic  church,  first  and  earliest  of  the  Sun 
day  bells,  began  tolling  briskly.  Judge  Priest 
waited  until  its  clamoring  had  died  away. 

"Goin'  to  be  good  and  hot  after  while,"  he 
said,  raising  his  voice. 

"What  say?" 

"I  say  it's  goin'  to  be  mighty  warm  a  little 
later  on  in  the  day,"  repeated  Judge  Priest. 

"Yes,  suh;  I  reckon  you're  right  there," 
assented  the  host.  "Just  a  minute  ago,  before 

you  came  over,  I  was  telling  Liddie  she'd  find 
__ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

it  middlin'  close  in  church  this  morning.  She's 
going,  though  —  runaway  horses  wouldn't  keep 
her  away  from  church!  I'm  not  going  myself 
—  seems  as  though  I'm  getting  more  and  more 
out  of  the  church  habit  here  lately." 

Judge  Priest's  eyes  squinted  in  whimsical 
appreciation  of  this  admission.  He  remembered 
that  the  other  man,  during  the  lifetime  of 
his  second  wife,  had  been  a  regular  attendant 
at  services — going  twice  on  Sundays  and  to 
Wednesday  night  prayer  meetings  too;  but 
the  second  wife  had  been  dead  going  on  four 
years  now  —  or  was  it  five?  Time  sped  so! 

The  deaf  man  spoke  on: 

"So  I  just  thought  I'd  sit  here  and  try  to 
keep  cool  and  wait  for  that  Ledbetter  boy 
to  come  round  with  the  Sunday  paper.  Did 
you  read  last  Sunday's  paper,  judge?  Colonel 
Watterson  certainly  had  a  mighty  fine  piece 
on  those  Northern  money  devils.  It's  round 
here  somewhere  —  I  cut  it  out  to  keep  it. 
I'd  like  to  have  you  read  it  and  pass  your 
opinion  on  it.  These  young  fellows  do  pretty 
well,  but  there's  none  of  them  can  write  like 
the  colonel,  in  my  judgment." 

Judge  Priest  appeared  not  to  have  heard  him. 

"Ed  Tilghman,"  he  said  abruptly  in  his  high, 
fine  voice,  that  seemed  absurdly  out  of  place, 
coming  from  his  round  frame,  "you  and  me 
have  lived  neighbors  together  a  good  while, 
haven't  we?  We've  been  right  acros't  the  street 
from  one  another  all  this  time.  It  kind  of 
[210], 


TO     THE     EDITOR     OF     THE     SUN 

jolts  me  sometimes  when  I  git  to  thinkin'  how 
many  years  it's  really  been;  because  we're 
gittin'  along  right  smartly  in  years  —  all  us 
old  fellows  are.  Ten  years  from  now,  say, 
there  won't  be  so  many  of  us  left."  He 
glanced  sidewise  at  the  lean,  firm  profile  of  his 
friend.  "You're  younger  than  some  of  us; 
but,  even  so,  you  ain't  exactly  what  I'd  call 
a  young  man  yourself." 

Avoiding  the  direct,  questioning  gaze  that 
his  companion  turned  on  him  at  this,  the  judge 
reached  forward  and  touched  a  ripe  balsam 
apple  that  dangled  in  front  of  him.  Instantly 
it  split,  showing  the  gummed  red  seeds  clinging 
to  the  inner  walls  of  the  sensitive  pod. 

"I'm  listening  to  you,  judge,"  said  the  deaf 
man. 

For  a  moment  the  old  judge  waited.  There 
was  about  him  almost  an  air  of  embarrassment. 
Still  considering  the  ruin  of  the  balsam  apple, 
he  spoke,  and  it  was  with  a  sort  of  hurried 
anxiety,  as  though  he  feared  he  might  be  checked 
before  he  could  say  what  he  had  to  say. 

"Ed,"  he  said,  "I  was  settin'  on  my  porch 
a  while  ago  waitin'  for  breakfast,  and  your 
brother  came  by."  He  shot  a  quick,  appre 
hensive  glance  at  his  silent  auditor.  Except 
for  a  tautened  flickering  of  the  muscles  about 
the  mouth,  there  was  no  sign  that  the  other 
had  heard  him.  "Your  brother  Abner  came 
by,"  repeated  the  judge,  "and  I  set  over  there 
on  my  porch  and  watched  him  pass.  Ed, 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

Abner's  gittin'  mighty  feeble!  He  jest  about 
kin  drag  himself  along  —  he's  had  another 
stroke  lately,  they  tell  me.  He  had  to  hold  on 
to  that  there  treebox  down  yonder,  steadyin' 
himself  after  he  crossed  back  over  to  this  side. 
Lord  knows  what  he  was  doin'  draggin'  down 
town  on  a  Sunday  mornin'  —  force  of  habit, 
I  reckin.  Anyway  he  certainly  did  look  older 
and  more  poorly  than  ever  I  saw  him  before. 
He's  a  failin'  man  if  I'm  any  judge.  Do  you 
hear  me  plain?"  he  asked. 

"I  hear  you,"  said  his  neighbor  in  a  curiously 
flat  voice.  It  was  Tilghman's  turn  to  avoid 
the  glances  of  his  friend.  He  stared  straight 
ahead  of  him  through  a  rift  in  the  vines. 

"Well,  then,"  went  on  Judge  Priest,  "here's 
what  I've  got  to  say  to  you,  Ed  Tilghman.  You 
know  as  well  as  I  do  that  I've  never  pried  into 
your  private  affairs,  and  it  goes  mightily  against 
the  grain  for  me  to  be  doin'  so  now;  but,  Ed, 
when  I  think  of  how  old  we're  all  gittin'  to  be, 
and  when  the  Camp  meets  and  I  see  you  settin' 
there  side  by  side  almost,  and  yet  never  seemin' 
to  see  each  other  —  and  this  mornin'  when  I 
saw  Abner  pass,  lookin'  so  gaunt  and  sick  — 
and  it  sech  a  sweet,  ca'm  mornin'  too,  and 

everything  so  quiet  and  peaceful "  He 

broke  off  and  started  anew.  "I  don't  seem 
to  know  exactly  how  to  put  my  thoughts  into 
words  —  and  puttin'  things  into  words  is 
supposed  to  be  my  trade  too.  Anyway  I 

couldn't  go  to  Abner.     He's  not  my  neighbor 
__ 


TO     THE     EDITOR     OF     THE     SUN 

and  you  are;  and  besides,  you're  the  youngest 
of  the  two.  So  —  so  I  came  over  here  to  you. 
Ed,  I'd  like  mightily  to  take  some  word  from 
you  to  your  brother  Abner.  I'd  like  to  do 
it  the  best  in  the  world!  Can't  I  go  to  him 
with  a  message  from  you — today?  Tomorrow 
might  be  too  late!" 

He  laid  one  of  his  pudgy  hands  on  the  bony 
knee  of  the  deaf  man;  but  the  hand  slipped 
away  as  Tilghman  stood  up. 

"Judge  Priest,"  said  Tilghman,  looking  down 
at  him,  "I've  listened  to  what  you've  had  to 
say;  and  I  didn't  stop  you,  because  you  are 
my  friend  and  I  know  you  mean  well  by  it. 
Besides,  you're  my  guest,  under  my  own  roof." 
He  stumped  back  and  forth  in  the  narrow  con 
fines  of  the  porch.  Otherwise  he  gave  no  sign 
of  any  emotion  that  might  be  astir  within 
him,  his  face  being  still  set  and  his  voice  flat. 
"What's  between  me  and  my  —  what's  between 
me  and  that  man  you  just  named  always  will 
be  between  us.  He's  satisfied  to  let  things  go 
on  as  they  are.  I'm  satisfied  to  let  them  go  on. 
It's  in  our  breed,  I  guess.  Words  —  just 
words  —  wouldn't  help  mend  this  thing.  The 
reason  for  it  would  be  there  just  the  same,  and 
neither  one  of  us  is  going  to  be  able  to  forget 
that  so  long  as  we  both  live.  I'd  just  as  soon 
you  never  brought  this  —  this  subject  up  again. 
If  you  went  to  him  I  presume  he'd  tell  you 
the  same  thing.  Let  it  be,  Judge  Priest  — 

it's   past   mending.      We    two  have    gone    on 
__ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

this  way  for  fifty  years  nearly.  We'll  keep 
on  going  on  so.  I  appreciate  your  kindness, 
Judge  Priest;  but  let  it  be  —  let  it  be!" 

There  was  finality  miles  deep  and  fixed  as 
basalt  in  his  tone.  He  checked  his  walk  and 
called  in  at  a  shuttered  window. 

"Liddie,"  he  said  in  his  natural  up-and-down 
voice,  "before  you  put  off  for  church,  couldn't 
you  mix  up  a  couple  of  lemonades  or  something? 
Judge  Priest  is  out  here  on  the  porch  with  me." 

"No,"  said  Judge  Priest,  getting  slowly  up, 
"I've  got  to  be  gittin'  back  before  the  sun's  up 
too  high.  If  I  don't  see  you  again  meanwhile 
be  shore  to  come  to  the  next  regular  meetin' 
of  the  Camp  —  on  Friday  night,"  he  added. 

"I'll  be  there,"  said  Tilghman.  "And  I'll 
try  to  find  that  piece  of  Colonel  Watterson's 
and  send  it  over  to  you.  I'd  like  mightily 
for  you  to  read  it." 

He  stood  at  the  opening  in  the  vines,  with 
one  slightly  palsied  hand  fumbling  at  a  loose 
tendril  as  the  judge  passed  down  the  short 
yard-walk  and  out  at  the  gate.  Then  he  went 
back  to  his  chair  and  sat  down  again.  All 
those  little  muscles  in  his  jowls  were  jumping. 

Clay  Street  was  no  longer  empty.  Looking 
down  its  dusty  length  from  beneath  the  shelter 
of  his  palmleaf  fan,  Judge  Priest  saw  here  and 
there  groups  of  children  —  the  little  girls  in 
prim  and  starchy  white,  the  little  boys  hob 
bling  in  the  Sunday  torment  of  shoes  and 
stockings;  and  all  of  them  were  moving  toward 


TO     THE     EDITOR     OF     THE     SUN 

a  common  center  —  Sunday  school.  Twice 
again  that  day  would  the  street  show  life  —  a 
little  later  when  grown-ups  went  their  way 
to  church,  and  again  just  after  the  noonday 
dinner,  when  young  people  and  servants, 
carrying  trays  and  dishes  under  napkins,  would 
cross  and  recross  from  one  house  to  another. 
The  Sunday  interchange  of  special  dainties 
between  neighbors  amounted  in  our  town  to  a 
ceremonial  and  a  rite;  but  after  that,  until  the 
cool  of  the  evening,  the  town  would  simmer 
in  quiet,  while  everybody  took  Sunday  naps. 

With  his  fan,  Judge  Priest  made  an  angry 
sawing  motion  in  the  air,  as  though  trying  to 
fend  off  something  disagreeable  —  a  memory, 
perhaps,  or  it  might  have  been  only  a  persistent 
midge.  There  were  plenty  of  gnats  and  midges 
about,  for  by  now  —  even  so  soon  —  the  dew 
was  dried.  The  leaves  of  the  silver  poplars 
were  turning  their  white  under  sides  up  like 
countless  frog  bellies,  and  the  long,  podded 
pendants  of  the  Injun-cigar  trees  hung  dangling 
and  still.  It  would  be  a  hot  day,  sure  enough; 
already  the  judge  felt  wilted  and  worn  out. 

In  our  town  we  had  our  tragedies  that 
endured  for  years  and,  in  the  small-town  way, 
finally  became  institutions.  There  was  the 
case  of  the  Burnleys.  For  thirty-odd  years 
old  Major  Burnley  lived  on  one  side  of  his 
house  and  his  wife  lived  on  the  other,  neither 
of  them  ever  crossing  an  imaginary  dividing 
line  that  ran  down  the  middle  of  the  hall, 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

having  for  their  medium  of  intercourse  all  that 
time  a  lean,  spinster  daughter,  in  whose  gray 
and  barren  life  churchwork  and  these  strange 
home  duties  took  the  place  that  Nature  had 
intended  to  be  filled  by  a  husband  and  by 
babies  and  grandbabies. 

There  was  crazy  Saul  Vance,  in  his  garb  of 
a  fantastic  scarecrow,  who  was  forever  starting 
somewhere  and  never  going  there  —  because, 
as  sure  as  he  came  to  a  place  where  two  roads 
crossed,  he  could  not  make  up  his  mind  which 
turn  to  take.  In  his  youth  a  girl  had  jilted 
him,  or  a  bank  had  failed  on  him,  or  a  horse 
had  kicked  him  in  the  head  —  or  maybe  it  was 
all  three  of  these  things  that  had  addled  his 
poor  brains.  Anyhow  he  went  his  pitiable, 
aimless  way  for  years,  taunted  daily  by  small 
boys  who  were  more  cruel  than  jungle  beasts. 
How  he  lived  nobody  knew,  but  when  he  died 
some  of  the  men  who  as  boys  had  jeered  him 
turned  out  to  be  his  volunteer  pallbearers. 

There  was  Mr.  H.  Jackman  —  Brother  Jack- 
man  to  all  the  town  —  who  had  been  our  lead 
ing  hatter  once  and  rich  besides,  and  in  the 
days  of  his  affluence  had  given  the  Baptist 
church  its  bells.  In  his  old  age,  when  he  was 
dog-poor,  he  lived  on  charity,  only  it  was  not 
known  by  that  word,  which  is  at  once  the 
sweetest  and  the  bitterest  word  in  our  tongue; 
for  Brother  Jackman,  always  primped,  always 
plump  and  well  clad,  would  go  through  the 
market  to  take  his  pick  of  what  was  there, 
- _  [216] 


TO     THE     EDITOR     OF     THE     SUN 

and  to  the  Richland  House  bar  for  his  toddies, 
and  to  Felsburg  Brothers  for  new  garments 
when  his  old  ones  wore  shabby  —  and  yet 
never  paid  a  cent  for  anything;  a  kindly  con 
spiracy  on  the  part  of  the  whole  town  enabling 
him  to  maintain  his  self-respect  to  the  last. 
Strangers  in  our  town  used  to  take  him  for  a 
retired  banker  —  that's  a  fact ! 

And  there  was  old  man  Stackpole,  who  had 
killed  his  man  —  had  killed  him  in  fair  fight 
and  had  been  acquitted  —  and  yet  walked  quiet 
back  streets  at  all  hours,  a  gray,  silent  shadow, 
and  never  slept  except  with  a  bright  light 
burning  in  his  room. 

The  tragedy  of  Mr.  Edward  Tilghman, 
though,  and  of  Captain  Abner  G.  Tilghman,  his 
elder  brother,  was  both  a  tragedy  and  a  mystery 
—  the  biggest  tragedy  and  the  deepest  mystery 
our  town  had  ever  known  or  ever  would  know 
probably.  All  that  anybody  knew  for  certain 
was  that  for  upward  of  fifty  years  neither  of 
them  had  spoken  to  the  other,  nor  by  deed  or 
look  had  given  heed  to  the  other.  As  boys, 
back  in  sixty-one,  they  had  gone  out  together. 
Side  by  side,  each  with  his  arm  over  the  other's 
shoulder,  they  had  stood  up  with  a  hundred 
others  to  be  sworn  into  the  service  of  the 
Confederate  States  of  America;  and  on  the 
morning  they  went  away  Miss  Sally  May 
Ghoulson  had  given  the  older  brother  her  silk 
scarf  off  her  shoulders  to  wear  for  a  sash.  Both 

the  brothers  had  liked  her;   but  by  this  public 
_ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

act  she  made  it  plain  which  of  them  was  her 
choice. 

Then  the  company  had  marched  off  to  the 
camp  on  the  Tennessee  border,  where  the  new 
troops  were  drilling;  and  as  they  marched 
some  watchers  wept  and  others  cheered  —  but 
the  cheering  predominated,  for  it  was  to  be 
only  a  sort  of  picnic  anyhow  —  so  everybody 
agreed.  As  the  orators  —  who  mainly  stayed 
behind  —  had  pointed  out,  the  Northern  people 
would  not  fight.  And  even  if  they  should  fight 
could  not  one  Southerner  whip  four  Yankees? 
Certainly  he  could;  any  fool  knew  that  much. 
In  a  month  or  two  months,  or  at  most  three 
months,  they  would  all  be  tramping  home  again, 
covered  with  glory  and  the  spoils  of  war,  and 
then  —  this  by  common  report  and  under 
standing  —  Miss  Sally  May  Ghoulson  and 
Abner  Tilghman  would  be  married,  with  a  big 
church  wedding. 

The  Yankees,  however,  unaccountably  fought, 
and  it  was  not  a  ninety-day  picnic  after  all. 
It  was  not  any  kind  of  a  picnic.  And 
when  it  was  over,  after  four  years  and  a 
month,  Miss  Sally  May  Ghoulson  and  Abner 
Tilghman  did  not  marry.  It  was  just  before 
the  battle  of  Chickamauga  when  the  other  men 
in  the  company  first  noticed  that  the  two 
Tilghmans  had  become  as  strangers,  and  worse 
than  strangers,  to  each  other.  They  quit 
speaking  to  each  other  then  and  there,  and  to 
any  man's  knowledge  they  never  spoke  again. 


TO     THE     EDITOR     OF     THE     SUN 

They  served  the  war  out,  Abner  rising  just 
before  the  end  to  a  captaincy,  Edward  serving 
always  as  a  private  in  the  ranks.  In  a  dour, 
gr;m  silence  they  took  the  fortunes  of  those 
last  hard,  hopeless  days  and  after  the  surrender 
down  in  Mississippi  they  came  back  with  the 
limping  handful  that  was  left  of  the  company; 
and  in  age  they  were  all  boys  still  —  but  in 
experience,  men,  and  in  suffering,  grandsires. 

Two  months  after  they  got  back  Miss  Sally 
May  Ghoulson  was  married  to  Edward,  the 
younger  brother.  Within  a  year  she  died,  and 
after  a  decent  period  of  mourning  Edward 
married  a  second  time  —  only  to  be  widowed 
again  after  many  years.  His  second  wife  bore 
him  children  and  they  died  —  all  except  one, 
a  daughter,  who  grew  up  and  married  badly; 
and  after  her  mother's  death  she  came  back  to 
live  with  her  deaf  father  and  minister  to  him. 
As  for  Captain  Abner  Tilghman,  he  never 
married  —  never,  so  far  as  the  watching  eyes 
of  the  town  might  tell,  looked  with  favor 
upon  another  woman.  And  he  never  spoke  to 
his  brother  or  to  any  of  his  brother's  family 
—  or  his  brother  to  him. 

With  years  the  wall  of  silence  they  had 
builded  up  between  them  turned  to  ice  and  the 
ice  to  stone.  They  lived  on  the  same  street, 
but  never  did  Edward  enter  Captain  Abner's 
bank,  never  did  Captain  Abner  pass  Edward's 
house  —  always  he  crossed  over  to  the  opposite 
side.  They  belonged  to  the  same  Veterans' 
[819]  ~ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

Camp  —  indeed  there   was   only   the   one  for 
them  to  belong  to;  they  voted  the  same  ticket 

—  straight    Democratic;     and    in    the    same 
church,  the  old  Independent  Presbyterian,  they 
worshiped  the  same  God  by  the  same  creed, 
the  older  brother  being  an  elder  and  the  younger 
a  plain  member  —  and  yet  never  crossed  looks. 

The  town  had  come  to  accept  this  dumb  and 
bitter  feud  as  unchangeable  and  eternal;  in 
time  people  ceased  even  to  wonder  what  its 
cause  had  been,  and  in  all  the  long  years  only 
one  man  had  tried,  before  now,  to  heal  it  up. 
When  old  Doctor  Henrickson  died,  a  young 
and  ardent  clergyman,  fresh  from  the  Virginia 
theological  school,  came  out  to  take  the  vacant 
pulpit;  and  he,  being  filled  with  a  high  sense 
of  his  holy  calling,  thought  it  shameful  that 
such  a  thing  should  be  in  the  congregation. 
He  went  to  see  Captain  Tilghman  about  it. 
He  never  went  but  that  once.  Afterward  it 
came  out  that  Captain  Tilghman  had  threat 
ened  to  walk  out  of  church  and  never  darken 
its  doors  again  if  the  minister  ever  dared  to 
mention  his  brother's  name  in  his  presence. 
So  the  young  minister  sorrowed,  but  obeyed, 
for  the  captain  was  rich  and  a  generous  giver 
to  the  church. 

And  he  had  grown  richer  with  the  years, 
and  as  he  grew  richer  his  brother  grew  poorer 

—  another  man  owned  the  drug  store  where 
Edward  Tilghman  had  failed.     They  had  grown 

from    young    to   middle-aged   men   and   from 
__ 


TO     THE     EDITOR     OF     THE     SUN 

middle-aged  men  to  old,  infirm  men;  and  first 
the  grace  of  youth  and  then  the  solidness  of 
maturity  had  gone  out  of  them  and  the  gnarli- 
ness  of  age  had  come  upon  them;  one  was  halt 
of  step  and  the  other  was  dull  of  ear;  and  the 
town  through  half  a  century  of  schooling  had 
accustomed  itself  to  the  situation  and  took  it 
as  a  matter  of  course.  So  it  was  and  so  it  always 
would  be  —  a  tragedy  and  a  mystery.  It  had 
not  been  of  any  use  when  the  minister  inter 
fered  and  it  was  of  no  use  now.  Judge  Priest, 
with  the  gesture  of  a  man  who  is  beaten, 
dropped  the  fan  on  the  porch  floor,  went 
into  his  darkened  sitting  room,  stretched 
himself  wearily  on  a  creaking  horsehide  sofa 
and  called  out  to  Jeff  to  make  him  a  mild 
toddy  —  one  with  plenty  of  ice  in  it. 

On  this  same  Sunday  —  or,  anyhow,  I  like 
to  fancy  it  was  on  this  same  Sunday  —  at  a 
point  distant  approximately  nine  hundred  and 
seventy  miles  in  a  northeasterly  direction  from 
Judge  Priest's  town,  Corporal  Jacob  Speck, 
late  of  Sigel's  command,  sat  at  the  kitchen  win 
dow  of  the  combined  Speck  and  Engel  apart 
ment  on  East  Eighty-fifth  Street  in  the  Borough 
of  Manhattan,  New  York.  He  was  in  his  shirt 
sleeves;  his  tender  feet  were  incased  in  a  pair 
of  red-and-green  carpet  slippers.  In  the  angle 
of  his  left  arm  he  held  his  youngest  grand 
child,  aged  one  and  a  half  years,  while  his  right 
hand  carefully  poised  a  china  pipe,  with  a  bowl 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

like  an  egg-cup  and  a  stem  like  a  fishpole. 
The  corporal's  blue  Hanoverian  eyes,  behind 
their  thick-lensed  glasses,  were  fixed  upon  a 
comprehensive  vista  of  East  Eighty-fifth  Street 
back  yards  and  clothespoles  and  fire  escapes; 
but  his  thoughts  were  very  much  elsewhere. 

Reared  back  there  at  seeming  ease,  the 
corporal  none  the  less  was  not  happy  in  his 
mind.  It  was  not  that  he  so  much  minded 
being  left  at  home  to  mind  the  youngest  baby 
while  the  rest  of  the  family  spent  the  after 
noon  amid  the  Teutonic  splendors  of  Smeltzer's 
Harlem  River  Casino,  with  its  acres  of  gravel 
walks  and  its  whitewashed  tree  trunks,  its 
straggly  flower  beds  and  its  high-collared  beers. 
He  was  used  to  that  sort  of  thing.  Since  a 
plague  of  multiplying  infirmities  of  the  body 
had  driven  him  out  of  his  job  in  the  tax  office, 
the  corporal  had  not  done  much  except  nurse 
the  babies  that  occurred  in  the  Speck-Engel 
establishment  with  such  unerring  regularity. 
Sometimes,  it  is  true,  he  did  slip  down  to  the 
corner  for  maybe  zwei  glasses  of  beer  and 
a  game  of  pinocle;  but  then,  likely  as  not, 
there  would  come  inopportunely  a  towheaded 
descendant  to  tell  him  Mommer  needed  him 
back  at  the  flat  right  away  to  mind  the  baby 
while  she  went  marketing  or  to  the  movies. 

He  could  endure  that  —  he  had  to.  What 
riled  Corporal  Jacob  Speck  on  this  warm  and 
sunny  Sunday  was  a  realization  that  he  was 
not  doing  his  share  at  making  the  history  of 


TO     THE     EDITOR     OF     THE     SUN 

the  period.  The  week  before  had  befallen  the 
fiftieth  anniversary  of  the  marching  away  of 
his  old  regiment  to  the  front;  there  had  been 
articles  in  the  daily  papers  about  it.  Also, 
in  patriotic  commemoration  of  the  great  event 
there  had  been  a  parade  of  the  wrinkled  sur 
vivors  —  ninety-odd  of  them  —  following  their 
tattered  and  faded  battle  flag  down  Fifth 
Avenue  past  apathetic  crowds,  nine-tenths  of 
whom  had  been  born  since  the  war  —  in  foreign 
lands  mainly;  and  at  least  half,  if  one  might 
judge  by  their  looks,  did  not  know  what  the 
parading  was  all  about,  and  did  not  particularly 
care  either. 

The  corporal  had  not  participated  in  the 
march  of  the  veterans;  he  had  not  even  attended 
the  banquet  that  followed  it.  True,  the 
youngest  grandchild  was  at  the  moment  cutting 
one  of  her  largest  jaw  teeth  and  so  had  required, 
for  the  time,  an  extraordinary  and  special 
amount  of  minding;  but  the  young  lady's 
dental  difficulty  was  not  the  sole  reason  for  his 
absence.  Three  weeks  earlier  the  corporal  had 
taken  part  in  Decoration  Day,  and  certainly 
one  parade  a  month  was  ample  strain  upon  a 
pair  of  legs  such  as  he  owned.  He  had  returned 
home  with  his  game  leg  behaving  more  gamely 
then  usual  and  with  his  sound  one  full  of  new 
and  painful  kinks.  Also,  in  honor  of  the 
occasion  he  had  committed  the  error  of  wearing 
a  pair  of  stiff  and  inflexible  new  shoes;  where- 

fore  he  had  worn  his  carpet  slippers  ever  since. 
__ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

Missing  the  fiftieth  anniversary  was  not 
the  main  point  with  the  corporal  —  that  was 
merely  the  fortune  of  war,  to  be  accepted  with 
fortitude  and  with  no  more  than  a  proper  and 
natural  amount  of  grumbling  by  one  who  had 
been  a  good  soldier  and  was  now  a  good  citizen; 
but  for  days  before  the  event,  and  daily  ever 
since,  divers  members  of  the  old  regiment  had 
been  writing  pieces  to  the  papers  —  the  Ger 
man  papers  and  the  English-printing  papers 
too  —  long  pieces,  telling  of  the  trip  to  Wash 
ington,  and  then  on  into  Virginia  and  Tennes 
see,  speaking  of  this  campaign  and  that  and 
this  battle  and  that.  And  because  there  was 
just  now  a  passing  wave  of  interest  in  Civil 
War  matters,  the  papers  had  printed  these 
contributions,  thereby  reflecting  much  glory 
on  the  writers  thereof.  But  Corporal  Speck, 
reading  these  things,  had  marveled  deeply 
that  sane  men  should  have  such  disgustingly 
bad  memories;  for  his  own  recollection  of  these 
stirring  and  epochal  events  differed  most  widely 
from  the  reminiscent  narration  of  each  mis 
guided  chronicler. 

It  was,  indeed,  a  shameful  thing  that  the 
most  important  occurrences  of  the  whole  war 
should  be  so  shockingly  mangled  and  mis 
handled  in  the  retelling.  They  were  so  griev 
ously  wrong,  those  other  veterans,  and  he  was 
so  absolutely  right.  He  was  always  right  in 
these  matters.  Only  the  night  before,  during 
a  merciful  respite  from  his  nursing  duties,  he 
.  [2241 


TO     THE     EDITOR     OF     THE     SUN 

had,  in  Otto  Wittenpen's  back  barroom,  spoken 
across  the  rim  of  a  tall  stein  with  some  bitter 
ness  of  certain  especially  grievous  misstate- 
ments  of  plain  fact  on  the  part  of  certain 
faulty-minded  comrades.  In  reply  Otto  had 
said,  in  a  rather  sneering  tone  the  corporal 
thought: 

"Say,  then,  Jacob,  why  don't  you  yourself 
write  a  piece  to  the  paper  telling  about  this 
regiment  of  yours  —  the  way  it  was?" 

"I  will.  Tomorrow  I  will  do  so  without 
fail,"  he  had  said,  the  ambition  of  authorship 
suddenly  stirring  within  him.  Now,  however, 
as  he  sat  at  the  kitchen  window,  he  gloomed 
in  his  disappointment,  for  he  had  tried  and 
he  knew  he  had  not  the  gift  of  the  written  line. 
A  good  soldier  he  had  been  —  yes,  none  better 

—  and  a  good  citizen,  and  in  his  day  a  capable 
and  painstaking  doorkeeper  in  the  tax  office; 
but  he  could  not  write  his  own  story.     That 
morning,  when  the  youngest  grandchild  slept 
and  his  daughter  and  his  daughter's  husband 
and    the    brood    of    his    older    grandchildren 
were  all  at  the  Lutheran  church  over  in  the 
next  block,  he  sat  himself  down  to  compose 
his  article  to  the  paper;   but  the  words  would 
not  come  —  or,  at  least,  after  the  first  line  or 
two  they  would  not  come. 

The  mental  pictures  of  those  stirring  great 
days  when  he  marched  off  on  his  two  good  legs 

—  both    good    legs    then  —  to    fight    for    the 
country  whose  language  he  could  not  yet  speak 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

was  there  in  bright  and  living  colors;  but 
the  sorry  part  of  it  was  he  could  not  clothe 
them  in  language.  In  the  trash  box  under  the 
sink  a  dozen  crumpled  sheets  of  paper  testified 
to  his  failure,  and  now,  alone  with  the  youngest 
Miss  Engel,  he  brooded  over  it  and  got  low  in 
his  mind  and  let  his  pipe  go  smack  out.  And 
right  then  and  there,  with  absolutely  no  warn 
ing  at  all,  there  came  to  him,  as  you  might  say 
from  the  clear  sky,  a  great  idea  —  an  idea  so 
magnificent  that  he  almost  dropped  the  young 
est  Miss  Engle  off  his  lap  at  the  splendid  shock 
of  it. 

With  solicitude  he  glanced  down  at  the 
small,  moist,  pink,  lumpy  bundle  of  prickly 
heat  and  sore  gums.  Despite  the  sudden 
jostle  the  young  lady  slept  steadily  on.  Very 
carefully  he  laid  his  pipe  aside  and  very  care 
fully  he  got  upon  his  feet,  jouncing  his  charge 
soothingly  up  and  down,  and  with  deftness 
he  committed  her  small  person  to  the  crib  that 
stood  handily  by.  She  stirred  fretfully,  but 
did  not'  wake.  The  corporal  steered  his  gimpy 
leg  and  his  rheumatic  one  out  of  the  kitchen, 
which  was  white  with  scouring  and  as  clean 
as  a  new  pin,  into  the  rearmost  and  smallest 
of  the  three  sleeping  rooms  that  mainly  made 
up  the  Speck-Engel  apartment. 

The  bed,  whereon  of  nights  Corporal  Speck 
reposed  with  a  bucking  bronco  of  an  eight- 
year-old  grandson  for  a  bedmate,  was  jammed 

close   against   the   plastering,    under   the    one 
_--. 


TO     THE     EDITOR     OF     THE     SUN 

small  window  set  diagonally  in  a  jog  in  the  wall, 
and  opening  out  upon  an  airshaft,  like  a  chim 
ney.  Time  had  been  when  the  corporal  had 
a  room  and  a  bed  all  his  own;  that  was  before 
the  family  began  to  grow  so  fast  in  its  second 
generation  and  while  he  still  held  a  place  of 
lucrative  employment  at  the  tax  office. 

As  he  got  down  upon  his  knees  beside  the 
bed  the  old  man  uttered  a  little  groan  of  dis 
comfort.  He  felt  about  in  the  space  under 
neath  and  drew  out  a  small  tin  trunk,  rusted 
on  its  corners  and  dented  in  its  sides.  He 
made  a  laborious  selection  of  keys  from  a 
key-ring  he  got  out  of  his  pocket,  unlocked 
the  trunk  and  lifted  out  a  heavy  top  tray. 
The  tray  contained,  among  other  things,  such 
treasures  as  his  naturalization  papers,  his  pen 
sion  papers,  a  photograph  of  his  dead  wife, 
and  a  small  bethumbed  passbook  of  the  East 
Side  Germania  Savings  Bank.  Underneath  was 
a  black  fatigue  hat  with  a  gold  cord  round 
its  crown,  a  neatly  folded  blue  uniform  coat, 
with  the  G.  A.  R.  bronze  showing  in  its  upper 
most  lapel,  and  below  that,  in  turn,  the  suit 
of  neat  black  the  corporal  wore  on  high  state 
occasions  and  would  one  day  wear  to  be  buried 
in.  Pawing  and  digging,  he  worked  his  hands 
to  the  very  bottom,  and  then,  with  a  little 
grunt,  he  heaved  out  the  thing  he  wanted — 
the  one  trophy,  except  a  stiffened  kneecap 
and  an  honorable  record,  this  old  man  had 
brought  home  from  the  South.  It  was  a 
[227] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

captured  Confederate  knapsack,  flattened  and 
flabby.  Its  leather  was  dry-rotted  with  age 
and  the  brass  C.  S.  A.  on  the  outer  flap  was 
gangrened  and  sunken  in;  the  flap  curled  up 
stiffly,  like  an  old  shoe  sole. 

The  crooked  old  fingers  undid  a  buckle 
fastening  and  from  the  musty  and  odorous 
interior  of  the  knapsack  withdrew  a  letter, 
in  a  queer-looking  yellowed  envelope,  with  a 
queer-looking  stamp  upon  the  upper  right- 
hand  corner  and  a  faint  superscription  upon 
its  face.  The  three  sheets  of  paper  he  slid 
out  of  the  envelope  were  too  old  even  to  rustle, 
but  the  close  writing  upon  them  in  a  brownish, 
faded  ink  was  still  plainly  to  be  made  out. 

Corporal  Speck  replaced  the  knapsack  in 
its  place  at  the  very  bottom,  put  the  tray  back 
in  its  place,  closed  the  trunk  and  locked  it 
and  shoved  it  under  the  bed.  The  trunk 
resisted  slightly  and  he  lost  one  carpet  slipper 
and  considerable  breath  in  the  struggle.  Limp 
ing  back  to  the  kitchen  and  seeing  that  little 
Miss  Engel  still  slumbered,  he  eased  his  frame 
into  a  chair  and  composed  himself  to  literary 
composition,  not  in  the  least  disturbed  by  the 
shouts  of  roistering  sidewalk  comedians  that 
filtered  up  to  him  from  down  below  in  front  of 
the  house,  or  by  the  distant  clatter  of  inter 
mittent  traffic  over  the  cobbly  spine  of  Second 
Avenue,  half  a  block  away.  For  some  time  he 
wrote,  with  a  most  scratchy  pen;  and  this  is 
what  he  wrote: 


TO     THE     EDITOR     OF     THE     SUN 

"To  THE  EDITOR  OF  THE  SUN,  CITY. 

"Dear  Sir:  The  undersigned  would  state 
that  he  served  two  years  and  nine  months  — 
until  wounded  in  action  —  in  the  Fighting 
Two  Hundred  and  Tenth  New  York  Infantry, 
and  has  been  much  interested  to  see  what  other 
comrades  wrote  for  the  papers  regarding  same 
in  connection  with  the  Rebellion  War  of  North 
and  South  respectively.  I  would  state  that 
during  the  battle  of  Chickamauga  I  was  for  a 
while  lying  near  by  to  a  Confederate  soldier  — 
name  unknown  —  who  was  dying  on  account 
of  a  wound  in  the  chest.  By  his  request  I 
gave  him  a  drink  of  water  from  my  canteen, 
he  dying  shortly  thereafter.  Being  myself 
wounded  —  right  knee  shattered  by  a  Minie 
ball  —  I  was  removed  to  a  field  hospital;  but 
before  doing  so  I  brought  away  this  man's 
knapsack  for  a  keepsake  of  the  occasion. 
Some  years  later  I  found  in  said  knapsack  a 
letter,  which  previous  to  then  was  overlooked 
by  me.  I  inclose  herewith  a  copy  of  said 
letter,  which  it  may  be  interesting  for  reading 
purposes  by  surviving  comrades. 
"Respectfully  yours, 

"JACOB  SPECK, 

Late  Corporal  "L  Company, 
Fighting  Two  Hundred  and  Tenth  New  York,  U.  S.  A." 

With  deliberation  and  squeaky  emphasis 
the  pen  progressed  slowly  across  the  paper, 
while  the  corporal,  with  his  left  hand,  held 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

flat  the  dead  man's  ancient  letter  before  him, 
intent  on  copying  it.  Hard  words  puzzled 
him  and  long  words  daunted  him,  and  he  was 
making  a  long  job  of  it  when  there  were  steps 
in  the  hall  without.  There  entered  breezily 
Miss  Hortense  Engel,  who  was  the  oldest  of 
all  the  multiplying  Engels,  pretty  beyond  ques 
tion  and  every  inch  American,  having  the  gift 
of  wearing  Lower  Sixth  Avenue  stock  designs 
in  a  way  to  make  them  seem  Upper  Fifth 
Avenue  models.  Miss  Engel's  face  was  pleas 
antly  flushed;  she  had  just  parted  lingeringly 
from  her  steady  company,  whose  name  was 
Mr.  Lawrence  J.  McLaughlin,  in  the  lower 
hallway,  which  is  the  trysting  place  and  court 
ing  place  of  tenement-dwelling  sweethearts, 
and  now  she  had  come  to  make  ready  the 
family's  cold  Sunday  night  tea.  At  sight  of 
her  the  corporal  had  another  inspiration  —  his 
second  within  the  hour.  His  brow  smoothed 
and  he  fetched  a  sigh  of  relief. 

"'Lo,  grosspops!"  she  said.  "How's  every 
little  thing?  The  kiddo  all  right?" 

She  unpinned  a  Sunday  hat  that  was  plumed 
like  a  hearse  and  slipped  on  a  long  apron  that 
covered  her  from  Robespierre  bib  to  hobble  hem. 

"Girl,"  said  her  grandfather,  "would  you 
make  tomorrow  for  me  at  the  office  a  copy  of 
this  letter  on  the  typewriter  machine?" 

He  spoke  in  German  and  she  answered  in 
New-Yorkese,  while  her  nimble  fingers  wrestled 
with  the  task  of  back-buttoning  her  apron. 
~~~~  [230] 


TO     THE     EDITOR     OF     THE     SUN 

"Sure  thing!  It  won't  take  hardly  a  minute 
to  rattle  that  off.  Funny -looking  old  thing!" 
she  went  on,  taking  up  the  creased  and  faded 
original.  "Who  wrote  it?  And  whatcher 
goin'  to  do  with  it,  grosspops?" 

"That,"  he  told  her,  "is  mine  own  busi 
ness!  It  is  for  you,  please,  to  make  the  copy 
and  bring  both  to  me  tomorrow,  the  letter  and 
also  the  copy." 

So  on  Monday  morning,  when  the  rush  of 
taking  dictation  at  the  office  of  the  Great 
American  Hosiery  Company,  in  Broome  Street, 
was  well  abated,  the  competent  Miss  Hortense 
copied  the  letter,  and  that  same  evening  her 
grandfather  mailed  it  to  the  Sun,  accompanied 
by  his  own  introduction.  The  Sun  straight 
way  printed  it  without  change  and  —  what 
was  still  better  —  with  the  sender's  name 
spelled  out  in  capital  letters;  and  that  night, 
at  the  place  down  by  the  corner,  Corporal 
Jacob  Speck  was  a  prophet  not  without  honor 
in  his  own  country  —  much  honor,  in  fact, 
accrued. 

If  you  have  read  certain  other  stories  of 
mine  you  may  remember  that,  upon  a  memo 
rable  occasion,  Judge  William  Pitman  Priest 
made  a  trip  to  New  York  and  while  there  had 
dealings  with  a  Mr.  J.  Hayden  Witherbee,  a 
promoter  of  gas  and  other  hot-air  propositions ; 
and  that  during  the  course  of  his  stay  in  the 
metropolis  he  made  the  acquaintance  of  one 
Malley,  a  Sun  reporter.  This  had  happened 
[231] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

some  years  back,  but  Malley  was  still  on  the 
staff  of  the  Sun.  It  happened  also  that,  going 
through  the  paper  to  clip  out  and  measure  up 
his  own  space,  Malley  came  upon  the  corporal's 
contribution.  Glancing  over  it  idly,  he  caught 
the  name,  twice  or  thrice  repeated,  of  the  town 
where  Judge  Priest  lived.  So  he  bundled 
together  a  couple  of  copies  and  sent  them  South 
with  a  short  letter;  and  therefore  it  came 
about  in  due  season,  through  the  good  offices 
of  the  United  States  Post-office  Department, 
that  these  enclosures  reached  the  judge  on  a 
showery  afternoon  as  he  loafed  upon  his  wide 
front  porch,  waiting  for  his  supper. 

First,  he  read  Malley's  letter  and  was  glad 
to  hear  from  Malley.  With  a  quickened 
interest  he  ran  a  plump  thumb  under  the 
wrappings  of  the  two  close-rolled  papers,  opened 
out  one  of  them  at  page  ten  and  read  the 
opening  statement  of  Corporal  Jacob  Speck, 
for  whom  instantly  the  judge  conceived  a  long 
distance  fondness.  Next  he  came  to  the 
letter  that  Miss  Hortense  Engel  had  so  accu 
rately  transcribed,  and  at  the  very  first  words 
of  it  he  sat  up  straighter,  with  a  surprised  and 
gratified  little  grunt;  for  he  had  known  them 
both  —  the  writer  of  that  letter  and  its  recipient. 
One  still  lived  in  his  memory  as  a  red-haired 
girl  with  a  pert,  malicious  face,  and  the  other 
as  a  stripling  youth  in  a  ragged  gray  uniform. 
And  he  had  known  most  of  those  whose  names 
studded  the  printed  lines  so  thickly.  Indeed, 
[232]  " 


TO     THE     EDITOR     OF     THE     SUN 

some  of  them  he  still  knew  —  only  now  they 
were  old  men  and  old  women  —  faded,  wrinkled 
bucks  and  belles  of  a  far-distant  day. 

As  he  read  the  first  words  it  came  back  to 
the  judge,  almost  with  the  jolting  emphasis 
of  a  new  and  fresh  sensation,  that  in  the  days 
of  his  own  youth  he  had  never  liked  the  girl 
who  wrote  that  letter  or  the  man  who  received 
it.  But  she  was  dead  this  many  and  many 
a  year  —  why,  she  must  have  died  soon  after 
she  wrote  this  very  letter  —  the  date  proved 
that  —  and  he,  the  man,  had  fallen  at  Chicka- 
mauga,  taking  his  death  in  front  like  a  sol 
dier;  and  surely  that  settled  everything  and 
made  all  things  right!  But  the  letter  — 
that  was  the  main  thing.  His  old  blue  eyes 
skipped  nimbly  behind  the  glasses  that  sad 
dled  the  tip  of  his  plump  pink  nose,  and  the 
old  judge  read  it  —  just  such  a  letter  as  he 
himself  had  received  many  a  time;  just  such 
a  wartime  letter  as  uncounted  thousands  of 
soldiers  North  and  South  received  from  their 
sweethearts  and  read  and  reread  by  the  light 
of  flickering  campfires  and  carried  afterward 
in  their  knapsacks  through  weary  miles  of 
marching. 

It  was  crammed  with  the  small-town  gossip 
of  a  small  town  that  was  but  little  more  than 
a  memory  now  —  telling  how,  because  he  would 
not  volunteer,  a  hapless  youth  had  been  way 
laid  by  a  dozen  high-spirited  girls  and  over 
powered,  and  dressed  in  a  woman's  shawl  and 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

a  woman's  poke  bonnet,  so  that  he  left  town 
with  his  shame  between  two  suns;  how,  since 
the  Yankees  had  come,  sundry  faithless  females 
were  friendly  —  actually  friendly,  this  being 
underscored  —  with  the  more  personable  of 
the  young  Yankee  officers;  how  half  the  town 
was  in  mourning  for  a  son  or  brother  dead  or 
wounded;  how  a  new  and  sweetly  sentimental 
song,  called  Rosalie,  the  Prairie  Flower,  was 
being  much  sung  at  the  time  —  and  had  it 
reached  the  army  yet?  how  old  Mrs.  Hobbs 
had  been  exiled  to  Canada  for  seditious  acts 
and  language  and  had  departed  northward 
between  two  files  of  bluecoats,  reviling  the 
Yankees  with  an  unbitted  tongue  at  every  step; 
how  So-and-So  had  died  or  married  or  gone 
refugeeing  below  the  enemy's  line  into  safely 
Southern  territory;  how  this  thing  had  hap 
pened  and  that  thing  had  not. 

The  old  judge  read  on  and  on,  catching 
gladly  at  names  that  kindled  a  tenderly  warm 
glow  of  half -forgotten  memories  in  his  soul, 
until  he  came  to  the  last  paragraph  of  all; 
and  then,  as  he  comprehended  the  intent  of 
it  in  all  its  barbed  and  venomed  malice,  he 
stood  suddenly  erect,  with  the  outspread 
paper  shaking  in  his  hard  grip.  For  now, 
coming  back  to  him  by  so  strange  a  way  across 
fifty  years  of  silence  and  misunderstanding,  he 
read  there  the  answer  to  the  town's  oldest, 
biggest  tragedy  and  knew  what  it  was  that  all 
this  time  had  festered,  like  buried  thorns,  in 
[234] 


TO     THE     EDITOR     OF     THE     SUN 

the  flesh  of  those  two  men,  his  comrades  and 
friends.  He  dropped  the  paper,  and  up  and 
down  the  wide,  empty  porch  he  stumped  on 
his  short  stout  legs,  shaking  with  the  shock 
of  revelation  and  with  indignation  and  pity  for 
the  blind  and  bitter  uselessness  of  it  all. 

"Ah  hah!"  he  said  to  himself  over  and  over 
again  understandingly.  "  Ah  hah ! "  And  then : 
"Next  to  a  mean  man,  a  mean  woman  is  the 
meanest  thing  in  this  whole  created  world,  I 
reckin.  I  ain't  sure  but  what  she's  the  mean 
est  of  the  two.  And  to  think  of  what  them 
two  did  between  'em  —  she  writin'  that  hellish 
black  lyin'  tale  to  'Lonzo  Pike  and  he  puttin' 
off  hotfoot  to  Abner  Tilghman  to  poison  his 
mind  with  it  and  set  him  like  a  flint  against  his 
own  flesh  and  blood!  And  wasn't  it  jest  like 
Lon  Pike  to  go  and  git  himself  killed  the  next 
day  after  he  got  that  there  letter!  And  wasn't 
it  jest  like  her  to  up  and  die  before  the  truth 
could  be  brought  home  to  her!  And  wasn't 
it  like  them  two  stubborn,  set,  contrary,  close- 
mouthed  Tilghman  boys  to  go  'long  through 
all  these  years,  without  neither  one  of  'em  ever 
offerin'  to  make  or  take  an  explanation!" 
His  tone  changed.  "Oh,  ain't  it  been  a  pitiful 
thing !  And  all  so  useless !  But  —  oh,  thank 
the  Lord  —  it  ain't  too  late  to  mend  it  part 
way  anyhow!  Thank  God,  it  ain't  too  late 
for  that!" 

Exulting  now,  he  caught  up  the  paper  he 
had  dropped,  and  with  it  crumpled  in  his 
[235] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

pudgy  fist  was  half-way  down  the  gravel  walk, 
bound  for  the  little  cottage  snuggled  in  its 
vine  ambush  across  Clay  Street  before  a  better 
and  a  bigger  inspiration  caught  up  with  him 
and  halted  him  midway  of  an  onward  stride. 

Was  not  this  the  second  Friday  in  the  month? 
It  certainly  was.  And  would  not  the  Camp  be 
meeting  tonight  in  regular  semimonthly  session 
at  Kamleiter's  Hall?  It  certainly  would. 
For  just  a  moment  Judge  Priest  considered  the 
proposition.  He  slapped  his  linen  clad  flank 
gleefully,  and  his  round  old  face,  which  had 
been  knotted  with  resolution,  broke  up  into 
a  wrinkly,  ample  smile;  he  spun  on  his 
heel  and  hurried  back  into  the  house  and  to 
the  telephone  in  the  hall.  For  half  an  hour, 
more  or  less,  Judge  Priest  was  busy  at  that 
telephone,  calling  in  a  high,  excited  voice, 
first  for  one  number  and  then  for  another. 
While  he  did  this  his  supper  grew  cold  on 
the  table,  and  in  the  dining  room  Jeff,  the 
white-clad,  fidgeted  and  out  in  the  kitchen 
Aunt  Dilsey,  the  turbaned,  fumed  —  but,  at 
Kamleiter's  Hall  that  night  at  eight,  Judge 
Priest's  industry  was  in  abundant  fulness 
rewarded. 

Once  upon  a  time  Gideon  K.  Irons  Camp 
claimed  a  full  two  hundred  members,  but 
that  had  been  when  it  was  first  organized. 
Now  there  were  in  good  standing  less  than 
twenty.  Of  these  twenty,  fifteen  sat  on  the 

hard  wooden  chairs  when  Judge  Priest  rapped 
__ 


TO     THE     EDITOR     OF     THE     SUN 

with  his  metal  spectacle  case  for  order,  and 
that  fifteen  meant  all  who  could  travel  out  at 
nights.  Doctor  Lake  was  there,  and  Sergeant 
Jimmy  Bagby,  the  faithful  and  inevitable. 
It  was  the  biggest  turnout  the  Camp  had  had 
in  a  year. 

Far  over  on  one  side,  cramped  down  in  a 
chair,  was  Captain  Abner  Tilghman,  feeble 
and  worn-looking.  His  buggy  horse  stood 
hitched  by  the  curb  downstairs.  Sergeant 
Jimmy  Bagby  had  gone  to  his  house  for  him 
and  on  the  plea  of  business  of  vital  moment 
had  made  him  come  with  him.  Almost  directly 
across  the  middle  aisle  on  the  other  side  sat 
Mr.  Edward  Tilghman.  Nobody  had  to  go  for 
him.  He  always  came  to  a  regular  meeting  of 
the  Camp,  even  though  he  heard  the  pro 
ceedings  only  in  broken  bits. 

The  adjutant  called  the  roll  and  those  present 
answered,  each  one  to  his  name;  and  mainly 
the  voices  sounded  bent  and  sagged,  like  the 
bodies  of  their  owners.  A  keen  onlooker  might 
have  noticed  a  sort  of  tremulous,  joyous  im 
patience,  which  filled  all  save  two  of  these  old, 
gray  men,  pushing  the  preliminaries  forward 
with  uncommon  speed.  They  fidgeted  in  their 
places. 

Presently  Judge  Priest  cleared  his  throat  of 
a  persistent  huskiness  and  stood  up. 

"Before  we  proceed  to  the  regular  routine," 
he  piped,  "I  desire  to  present  a  certain  matter 

to  a  couple  of  our  members."     He  came  down 
_ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

off  the  little  platform,  where  the  flags  were 
draped,  with  a  step  that  was  almost  light, 
and  into  Captain  Abner  Tilghman's  hand  he 
put  a  copy  of  a  city  paper,  turned  and  folded 
at  a  certain  place,  where  a  column  of  printed 
matter  was  scored  about  with  heavy  pencil 
bracketings.  "Cap'n,"  he  said,  "as  a  personal 
favor  to  me,  suh,  would  you  please  read  this 
here  article?  —  the  one  that's  marked"  —  he 
pointed  with  his  finger  —  "not  aloud  —  read 
it  to  yourself,  please." 

It  was  characteristic  of  the  paralytic  to  say 
nothing.  Without  a  word  he  adjusted  his 
glasses  and  without  a  word  he  began  to  read. 
So  instantly  intent  was  he  that  he  did  not  see 
what  followed  next — and  that  was  Judge  Priest 
crossing  over  to  Mr.  Edward  Tilghman's  side 
with  another  copy  of  a  paper  in  his  hand. 

"Ed,"  he  bade  him,  "read  this  here  article, 
won't  you?  Read  it  clear  through  to  the  end 
—  it  might  interest  you  maybe."  The  deaf 
man  looked  up  at  him  wonderingly,  but  took 
the  paper  in  his  slightly  palsied  hand  and  bent 
his  head  close  above  the  printed  sheet. 

Judge  Priest  stood  in  the  middle  aisle,  mak 
ing  no  move  to  go  back  to  his  own  place.  He 
watched  the  two  silent  readers.  All  the  others 
watched  them  too.  They  read  on,  making 
slow  progress,  for  the  light  was  poor  and  their 
eyes  were  poor.  And  the  watchers  could 
hardly  contain  themselves;  they  could  hardly 

wait.     Sergeant  Jimmy   Bagby  kept  bobbing 
__ 


TO     THE     EDITOR     OF     THE     SUN 

up  and  down  like  a  pudgy  jack-in-the-box  that 
is  slightly  stiff  in  its  joints.  A  small,  restrained 
rustle  of  bodies  accompanied  the  rustle  of  the 
folded  newspapers  held  in  shaky  hands. 

Unconscious  of  all  scrutiny,  the  brothers 
read  on.  Perhaps  because  he  had  started  first 
—  perhaps  because  his  glasses  were  the  more 
expensive  and  presumably  therefore  the  more 
helpful  —  Captain  Abner  Tilghman  came  to 
the  concluding  paragraph  first.  He  read  it 
through  —  and  then  Judge  Priest  turned  his 
head  away,  for  a  moment  almost  regretting  he 
had  chosen  so  public  a  place  for  this  thing. 

He  looked  back  again  in  time  to  see  Captain 
Abner  getting  upon  his  feet.  Dragging  his 
dead  leg  behind  him,  the  paralytic  crossed  the 
bare  floor  to  where  his  brother's  gray  head 
was  bent  to  his  task.  And  at  his  side  he  halted, 
making  no  sound  or  sign,  but  only  waiting. 
He  waited  there,  trembling  all  over,  until  the 
sitter  came  to  the  end  of  the  column  and  read 
what  was  there  —  and  lifted  a  face  all  glorified 
with  a  perfect  understanding. 
-  "Eddie!"  said  the  older  man  — "Eddie!" 
He  uttered  a  name  of  boyhood  affection  that 
none  there  had  heard  uttered  for  fifty  years 
nearly;  and  it  was  as  though  a  stone  had 
been  rolled  away  from  a  tomb  —  as  though 
out  of  the  grave  of  a  dead  past  a  voice  had 
been  resurrected.  "Eddie!"  he  said  a  third 
time,  pleadingly,  abjectly,  humbly,  craving 

for  forgivenness. 

__ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

"Brother  Abner!"  said  the  other  man.  "Oh, 
Brother  Abner!"  he  said  —  and  that  was  all 
he  did  say  —  all  he  had  need  to  say,  for  he 
was  on  his  feet  now,  reaching  out  with  wide 
spread,  shaking  arms. 

Sergeant  Jimmy  Bagby  tried  to  start  a  cheer, 
but  could  not  make  it  come  out  of  his  throat 
—  only  a  clicking,  squeaking  kind  of  sound 
came.  As  a  cheer  it  was  a  miserable  failure. 

Side  by  side,  each  with  his  inner  arm  tight 
gripped  about  the  other,  the  brothers,  bare 
headed,  turned  their  backs  upon  their  friends 
and  went  away.  Slowly  they  passed  out 
through  the  doorway  into  the  darkness  of  the 
stair  landing,  and  the  members  of  the  Gideon 
K.  Irons  Camp  were  all  up  on  their  feet. 

"Mind  that  top  step,  Abner!"  they  heard 
the  younger  man  say.  "Wait!  I'll  help  you 
down." 

That  was  all  that  was  heard,  except  a  scuf 
fling  sound  of  uncertainly  placed  feet,  growing 
fainter  and  fainter  as  the  two  brothers  passed 
down  the  long  stairs  of  Kamleiter's  Hall  and 
out  into  the  night  —  that  was  all,  unless  you 
would  care  to  take  cognizance  of  a  subdued 
little  chorus  such  as  might  be  produced  by 
twelve  or  thirteen  elderly  men  snuffling  in  a 
large  bare  room.  As  commandant  of  the 
Camp  it  was  fitting,  perhaps,  that  Judge 
Priest  should  speak  first. 

"The  trouble  with  this  here  Camp  is  jest 
this,"  he  said:  "it's  got  a  lot  of  snifflin*  old 
[240] 


TO     THE     EDITOR     OF     THE     SUN 

fools  in  it  that  don't  know  no  better  than  to 
bust  out  cryin5  when  they  oughter  be  happy!" 
And  then,  as  if  to  show  how  deeply  he  felt  the 
shame  of  such  weakness  on  the  part  of  others, 
Judge  Priest  blew  his  nose  with  great  violence, 
and  for  a  space  of  minutes  industriously 
mopped  at  his  indignant  eyes  with  an  enormous 
pocket  handkerchief. 

c*  * 

In  accordance  with  a  rule,  Jeff  Poindexter 
waited  up  for  his  employer.  Jeff  expected 
him  by  nine-thirty  at  the  latest;  but  it  was 
actually  getting  along  toward  ten-thirty  before 
Jeff,  who  had  been  dozing  lightly  in  the  dim-lit 
hall,  oblivious  to  the  fanged  attentions  of  some 
large  mosquitoes,  roused  suddenly  as  he  heard 
the  sound  of  a  rambling  but  familiar  step 
clunking  along  the  wooden  sidewalk  of  Clay 
Street.  The  latch  on  the  front  gate  clicked, 
and  as  Jeff  poked  his  nose  out  of  the  front  door 
he  heard,  down  the  aisle  of  trees  that  bordered 
the  gravel  walk,  the  voice  of  his  master  uplifted 
in  solitary  song. 

In  the  matter  of  song  the  judge  had  a  pecul 
iarity.  It  made  no  difference  what  the  words 
might  be  or  the  theme  —  he  sang  every  song 
and  all  songs  to  a  fine,  high,  tuneless  little 
tune  of  his  own.  At  this  moment  Judge 
Priest,  as  Jeff  gathered,  was  showing  a  wide 
range  of  selection.  One  second  he  was  announ 
cing  that  his  name  it  was  Joe  Bowers  and  he 

was  all  the  way  from  Pike,    and  the  next  he 
,__ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

was  stating,  for  the  benefit  of  all  who  might 
care  to  hear  these  details,  that  they  —  presum 
ably  certain  horses  —  were  bound  to  run  all 
night  —  bound  to  run  all  day;  so  you  could 
bet  on  the  bobtailed  nag  and  he'd  bet  on  the 
bay.  Nearer  to  the  porch  steps  it  boastingly 
transpired  that  somebody  had  jumped  aboard 
the  telegraf  and  steered  her  by  the  triggers, 
whereat  the  lightnin*  flew  and  'lectrified 
and  killed  ten  thousand  niggers!  But  even 
so  general  a  catastrophe  could  not  weigh 
down  the  singer's  spirits.  As  he  put  a 
fumbling  foot .  upon  the  lowermost  step  of 
the  porch,  he  threw  his  head  far  back  and 
shrilly  issued  the  following  blanket  invitation 
to  ladies  resident  in  a  far-away  district: 

Oh,  Bowery  gals,  won't  you  come  out  tonight? 

Won't  you  come  out  tonight? 

Oh,  Bowery  gals,  won't  you  come  out  tonight, 

And  dance  by  the  light  of  the  moon  ? 

I  danced  with  a  gal  with  a  hole  in  her  stockin9; 

And  her  heel  it  kep'  a-rockin'  —  kep'  a-rockin'! 

She  was  the  purtiest  gal  in  the  room! 

Jeff  pulled  the  front  door  wide  open.  The 
song  stopped  and  Judge  Priest  stood  in  the 
opening,  teetering  a  little  on  his  heels.  His 
face  was  all  a  blushing  pinky  glow. 

"Evenin',  jedge!"  greeted  Jeff.  "You're 

late,  suh!" 

[242] 


TO     THE     EDITOR     OF     THE     SUN 

"Jeff,"  said  Judge  Priest  slowly,  "it's  a 
beautiful  evenin'." 

Amazed,  Jeff  stared  at  him.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  the  drizzle  of  the  afternoon  had  changed, 
soon  after  dark,  to  a  steady  downpour.  The 
judge's  limpened  hat  brim  dripped  raindrops 
and  his  shoulders  were  sopping  wet,  but  Jeff 
had  yet  to  knowingly  and  wilfully  contradict 
a  prominent  white  citizen. 

"Yas,  suh!"  he  said,  half  affirmatively,  half 
questioningly.  "Is  it?" 

"It  is  so!"  said  Judge  Priest.  "Every  star 
in  the  sky  shines  like  a  diamond !  Jeff,  it's  the 
most  beautiful  evenin'  I  ever  remember! " 


[243] 


VIII 

FISHHEAD 


IT  goes  past  the  powers  of  my  pen  to  try  to 
describe  Reelfoot  Lake  for  you  so  that 
you,  reading  this,  will  get  the  picture  of 
it  in  your  mind  as  I  have  it  in    mine. 
For  Reelfoot  Lake  is  like  no  other  lake  that 
I  know  anything  about.     It  is  an  afterthought 
of  Creation. 

The  rest  of  this  continent  was  made  and 
had  dried  in  the  sun  for  thousands  of  years 
—  for  millions  of  years  for  all  I  know  — 
before  Reelfoot  came  to  be.  It's  the  newest 
big  thing  in  nature  on  this  hemisphere  probably, 
for  it  was  formed  by  the  great  earthquake 
of  1811,  just  a  little  more  than  a  hundred 
years  ago.  That  earthquake  of  1811  surely 
altered  the  face  of  the  earth  on  the  then  far 
frontier  of  this  country.  It  changed  the 
course  of  rivers,  it  converted  hills  into  what 
are  now  the  sunk  lands  of  three  states,  and  it 
turned  the  solid  ground  to  jelly  and  made  it 

roll  in  waves  like  the  sea.     And  in  the  midst 

.. ^ 


FISHHEAD 


of  the  retching  of  the  land  and  the  vomiting 
of  the  waters  it  depressed  to  varying  depths 
a  section  of  the  earth  crust  sixty  miles  long, 
taking  it  down  —  trees,  hills,  hollows  and  all ; 
and  a  crack  broke  through  to  the  Mississippi 
River  so  that  for  three  days  the  river  ran  up 
stream,  filling  the  hole. 

The  result  was  the  largest  lake  south  of  the 
Ohio,  lying  mostly  in  Tennessee,  but  extending 
up  across  what  is  now  the  Kentucky  line,  and 
taking  its  name  from  a  fancied  resemblance 
in  its  outline  to  the  splay,  reeled  foot  of  a 
cornfield  negro.  Nigger  wool  Swamp,  not  so 
far  away,  may  have  got  its  name  from  the  same 
man  who  christened  Reelfoot;  at  least  so  it 
sounds. 

Reelfoot  is,  and  has  always  been,  a  lake  of 
mystery.  In  places  it  is  bottomless.  Other 
places  the  skeletons  of  the  cypress  trees  that 
went  down  when  the  earth  sank  still  stand 
upright,  so  that  if  the  sun  shines  from  the 
right  quarter  and  the  water  is  less  muddy 
than  common,  a  man  peering  face  downward 
into  its  depths  sees,  or  thinks  he  sees,  down 
below  him  the  bare  top-limbs  upstretching 
like  drowned  men's  fingers,  all  coated  with 
the  mud  of  years  and  bandaged  with  pennons 
of  the  green  lake  slime.  In  still  other  places 
the  lake  is  shallow  for  long  stretches,  no  deeper 
than  breast  deep  to  a  man,  but  dangerous 
because  of  the  weed  growths  and  the  sunken 
drifts  which  entangle  a  swimmer's  limbs.  Its 
[2451  ~~~ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

banks  are  mainly  mud,  its  waters  are  muddied 
too,  being  a  rich  coffee  color  in  the  spring  and 
a  copperish  yellow  in  the  summer,  and  the 
trees  along  its  shore  are  mud  colored  clear  up  to 
their  lower  limbs  after  the  spring  floods,  when 
the  dried  sediment  covers  their  trunks  with  a 
thick,  scrofulous-looking  coat. 

There  are  stretches  of  unbroken  woodland 
around  it  and  slashes  where  the  cypress  knees 
rise  countlessly  like  headstones  and  footstones 
for  the  dead  snags  that  rot  in  the  soft  ooze. 
There  are  deadenings  with  the  lowland  corn 
growing  high  and  rank  below  and  the  bleached, 
fire-blackened  girdled  trees  rising  above,  barren 
of  leaf  and  limb.  There  are  long,  dismal  flats 
where  in  the  spring  the  clotted  frog-spawn 
clings  like  patches  of  white  mucus  among  the 
weed  stalks  and  at  night  the  turtles  crawl 
out  to  lay  clutches  of  perfectly  round,  white 
eggs  with  tough,  rubbery  shells  in  the  sand. 
There  are  bayous  leading  of!  to  nowhere 
and  sloughs  that  wind  aimlessly,  like  great, 
blind  worms,  to  finally  join  the  big  river  that 
rolls  its  semi-liquid  torrents  a  few  miles  to  the 
westward. 

So  Reelfoot  lies  there,  flat  in  the  bottoms, 
freezing  lightly  in  the  winter,  steaming  torridly 
in  the  summer,  swollen  in  the  spring  when  the 
woods  have  turned  a  vivid  green  and  the 
buffalo  gnats  by  the  million  and  the  billion 
fill  the  flooded  hollows  with  their  pestilential 
buzzing,  and  in  the  fall  ringed  about  gloriously 
[246] 


FISHHEAD 


with  all  the  colors  which  the  first  frost  brings 
—  gold  of  hickory,  yellow-russet  of  sycamore, 
red  of  dogwood  and  ash  and  purple-black  of 
sweet-gum. 

But  the  Reelfoot  country  has  its  uses.  It 
is  the  best  game  and  fish  country,  natural  or 
artificial,  that  is  left  in  the  South  today.  In 
their  appointed  seasons  the  duck  and  the 
geese  flock  in,  and  even  semi-tropical  birds, 
like  the  brown  pelican  and  the  Florida  snake- 
bird,  have  been  known  to  come  there  to  nest. 
Pigs,  gone  back  to  wildness,  range  the  ridges, 
each  razor-backed  drove  captained  by  a  gaunt, 
savage,  slab-sided  old  boar.  By  night  the 
bull  frogs,  inconceivably  big  and  tremendously 
vocal,  bellow  under  the  banks. 

It  is  a  wonderful  place  for  fish  —  bass  and 
crappie  and  perch  and  the  snouted  buffalo 
fish.  How  these  edible  sorts  live  to  spawn 
and  how  their  spawn  in  turn  live  to  spawn 
again  is  a  marvel,  seeing  how  many  of  the 
big  fish-eating  cannibal  fish  there  are  in  Reel- 
foot.  Here,  bigger  than  anywhere  else,  you 
find  the  garfish,  all  bones  and  appetite  and 
horny  plates,  with  a  snout  like  an  alligator, 
the  nearest  link,  naturalists  say,  between  the 
animal  life  of  today  and  the  animal  life  of  the 
Reptilian  Period.  The  shovel-nose  cat,  really 
a  deformed  kind  of  freshwater  sturgeon,  with 
a  great  fan-shaped  membranous  plate  jutting 
out  from  his  nose  like  a  bowsprit,  jumps  all 
day  in  the  quiet  places  with  mighty  splashing 
JUT]  ~ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

sounds,  as  though  a  horse  had  fallen  into  the 
water.  On  every  stranded  log  the  huge  snap 
ping  turtles  lie  on  sunny  days  in  groups  of 
four  and  six,  baking  their  shells  black  in  the 
sun,  with  their  little  snaky  heads  raised  watch 
fully,  ready  to  slip  noiselessly  off  at  the  first 
sound  of  oars  grating  in  the  row-locks. 

But  the  biggest  of  them  all  are  the  catfish. 
These  are  monstrous  creatures,  these  catfish  of 
Reelfoot  —  scaleless,  slick  things,  with  corpsy, 
dead  eyes  and  poisonous  fins  like  javelins  and 
long  whiskers  dangling  from  the  sides  of  their 
cavernous  heads.  Six  and  seven  feet  long  they 
grow  to  be  and  to  weigh  two  hundred  pounds 
or  more,  and  they  have  mouths  wide  enough  to 
take  in  a  man's  foot  or  a  man's  fist  and  strong 
enough  to  break  any  hook  save  the  strongest 
and  greedy  enough  to  eat  anything,  living  or 
dead  or  putrid,  that  the  horny  jaws  can  master. 
Oh,  but  they  are  wicked  things,  and  they  tell 
wicked  tales  of  them  down  there.  They  call 
them  man-eaters  and  compare  them,  in  certain 
of  their  habits,  to  sharks. 

Fishhead  was  of  a  piece  with  this  setting. 
He  fitted  into  it  as  an  acorn  fits  its  cup.  All 
his  life  he  had  lived  on  Reelfoot,  always  in 
the  one  place,  at  the  mouth  of  a  certain  slough. 
He  had  been  born  there,  of  a  negro  father  and 
a  half-breed  Indian  mother,  both  of  them  now 
dead,  and  the  story  was  that  before  his  birth 
his  mother  was  frightened  by  one  of  the  big 

fish,   so  that  the  child  came  into  the  world 
__ 


FISHHEAD 

most  hideously  marked.  Anyhow,  Fishhead 
was  a  human  monstrosity,  the  veritable  em 
bodiment  of  nightmare.  He  had  the  body  of 
a  man  —  a  short,  stocky,  sinewy  body  —  but 
his  face  was  as  near  to  being  the  face  of  a 
great  fish  as  any  face  could  be  and  yet  retain 
some  trace  of  human  aspect.  His  skull  sloped 
back  so  abruptly  that  he  could  hardly  be  said 
to  have  a  forehead  at  all;  his  chin  slanted  off 
right  into  nothing.  His  eyes  were  small  and 
round  with  shallow,  glazed,  pale-yellow  pupils, 
and  they  were  set  wide  apart  in  his  head  and 
they  were  unwinking  and  staring,  like  a  fish's 
eyes.  His  nose  was  no  more  than  a  pair  of 
tiny  slits  in  the  middle  of  the  yellow  mask. 
His  mouth  was  the  worst  of  all.  It  was  the 
awful  mouth  of  a  catfish,  lipless  and  almost 
inconceivably  wide,  stretching  from  side  to 
side.  Also  when  Fishhead  became  a  man 
grown  his  likeness  to  a  fish  increased,  for  the 
hair  upon  his  face  grew  out  into  two  tightly 
kinked,  slender  pendants  that  drooped  down 
either  side  of  the  mouth  like  the  beards  of  a 
fish. 

If  he  had  any  other  name  than  Fishhead, 
none  excepting  he  knew  it.  As  Fishhead  he 
was  known  and  as  Fishhead  he  answered. 
Because  he  knew  the  waters  and  the  woods  of 
Reelfoot  better  than  any  other  man  there, 
he  was  valued  as  a  guide  by  the  city  men  who 
came  every  year  to  hunt  or  fish;  but  there 
were  few  such  jobs  that  Fishhead  would  take. 
[2491 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

Mainly  he  kept  to  himself,  tending  his  corn 
patch,  netting  the  lake,  trapping  a  little  and 
in  season  pot  hunting  for  the  city  markets. 
His  neighbors,  ague-bitten  whites  and  malaria- 
proof  negroes  alike,  left  him  to  himself.  Indeed 
for  the  most  part  they  had  a  superstitious  fear 
of  him.  So  he  lived  alone,  with  no  kith  nor 
kin,  nor  even  a  friend,  shunning  his  kind  and 
shunned  by  them. 

His  cabin  stood  just  below  the  state  line, 
where  Mud  Slough  runs  into  the  lake.  It 
was  a  shack  of  logs,  the  only  human  habitation 
for  four  miles  up  or  down.  Behind  it  the 
thick  timber  came  shouldering  right  up  to  the 
edge  of  Fishhead's  small  truck  patch,  enclosing 
it  in  thick  shade  except  when  the  sun  stood 
just  overhead.  He  cooked  his  food  in  a  primi 
tive  fashion,  outdoors,  over  a  hole  in  the  soggy 
earth  or  upon  the  rusted  red  ruin  of  an  old 
cook  stove,  and  he  drank  the  saffron  water 
of  the  lake  out  of  a  dipper  made  of  a  gourd, 
faring  and  fending  for  himself,  a  master  hand 
at  skiff  and  net,  competent  with  duck  gun 
and  fish  spear,  yet  a  creature  of  affliction  and 
loneliness,  part  savage,  almost  amphibious,  set 
apart  from  his  fellows,  silent  and  suspicious. 

In  front  of  his  cabin  jutted  out  a  long  fallen 
cottonwood  trunk,  lying  half  in  and  half  out 
of  the  water,  its  top  side  burnt  by  the  sun 
and  worn  by  the  friction  of  Fishhead's  bare 
feet  until  it  showed  countless  patterns  of  tiny 
scrolled  lines,  its  under  side  black  and  rotted 
_  [250] 


F  I  S  H  H  E  A  D 


and  lapped  at  unceasingly  by  little  waves  like 
tiny  licking  tongues.  Its  farther  end  reached 
deep  water.  And  it  was  a  part  of  Fishhead, 
for  no  matter  how  far  his  fishing  and  trapping 
might  take  him  in  the  daytime,  sunset  would 
find  him  back  there,  his  boat  drawn  up  on  the 
bank  and  he  on  the  outer  end  of  this  log. 
From  a  distance  men  had  seen  him  there  many 
times,  sometimes  squatted,  motionless  as  the 
big  turtles  that  would  crawl  upon  its  dipping 
tip  in  his  absence,  sometimes  erect  and  vigi 
lant  like  a  creek  crane,  his  misshapen  yellow 
form  outlined  against  the  yellow  sun,  the 
yellow  water,  the  yellow  banks  —  all  of  them 
yellow  together. 

If  the  Reelfooters  shunned  Fishhead  by 
day  they  feared  him  by  night  and  avoided  him 
as  a  plague,  dreading  even  the  chance  of  a 
casual  meeting.  For  there  were  ugly  stories 
about  Fishhead  —  stories  which  all  the  negroes 
and  some  of  the  whites  believed.  They  said 
that  a  cry  which  had  been  heard  just  before 
dusk  and  just  after,  skittering  across  the 
darkened  waters,  was  his  calling  cry  to  the  big 
cats,  and  at  his  bidding  they  came  trooping  in, 
and  that  in  their  company  he  swam  in  the  lake 
on  moonlight  nights,  sporting  with  them,  diving 
with  them,  even  feeding  with  them  on  what 
manner  of  unclean  things  they  fed.  The  cry 
had  been  heard  many  times,  that  much  was 
certain,  and  it  was  certain  also  that  the  big 
fish  were  noticeably  thick  at  the  mouth  of 
[251] 


THE      ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

Fishhead's  slough.  No  native  Reelfooter,  white 
or  black,  would  willingly  wet  a  leg  or  an  arm 
there. 

Here  Fishhead  had  lived  and  here  he  was 
going  to  die.  The  Baxters  were  going  to  kill 
him,  and  this  day  in  mid-summer  was  to  be  the 
time  of  the  killing.  The  two  Baxters  —  Jake 
and  Joel  —  were  coming  in  their  dugout  to  do 
it.  This  murder  had  been  a  long  time  in  the 
making.  The  Baxters  had  to  brew  their  hate 
over  a  slow  fire  for  months  before  it  reached  the 
pitch  of  action.  They  were  poor  whites,  poor 
in  everything  —  repute  and  worldly  goods  and 
standing  —  a  pair  of  fever-ridden  squatters  who 
lived  on  whisky  and  tobacco  when  they  could 
get  it,  and  on  fish  and  cornbread  when  they 
couldn't. 

The  feud  itself  was  of  months'  standing. 
Meeting  Fishhead  one  day  in  the  spring  on 
the  spindly  scaffolding  of  the  skiff  landing  at 
Walnut  Log,  and  being  themselves  far  over 
taken  in  liquor  and  vainglorious  with  a  bogus 
alcoholic  substitute  for  courage,  the  brothers 
had  accused  him,  wantonly  and  without  proof, 
of  running  their  trot-line  and  stripping  it  of 
the  hooked  catch  —  an  unforgivable  sin  among 
the  water  dwellers  and  the  shanty  boaters  of  the 
South.  Seeing  that  he  bore  this  accusation 
in  silence,  only  eyeing  them  steadfastly,  they 
had  been  emboldened  then  to  slap  his  face, 
whereupon  he  turned  and  gave  them  both  the 
beating  of  their  lives  —  bloodying  their  noses 


F  I  S  H  H  E  A  D 


and  bruising  their  lips  with  hard  blows  against 
their  front  teeth,  and  finally  leaving  them, 
mauled  and  prone,  in  the  dirt.  Moreover,  in 
the  onlookers  a  sense  of  the  everlasting  fitness 
of  things  had  triumphed  over  race  prejudice 
and  allowed  them  —  two  freeborn,  sovereign 
whites  —  to  be  licked  by  a  nigger. 

Therefore,  they  were  going  to  get  the  nigger. 
The  whole  thing  had  been  planned  out  amply. 
They  were  going  to  kill  him  on  his  log  at  sun 
down.  There  would  be  no  witnesses  to  see  it, 
no  retribution  to  follow  after  it.  The  very 
ease  of  the  undertaking  made  them  forget 
even  their  inborn  fear  of  the  place  of  Fishhead's 
habitation. 

For  more  than  an  hour  now  they  had  been 
coming  from  their  shack  across  a  deeply 
indented  arm  of  the  lake.  Their  dugout, 
fashioned  by  fire  and  adz  and  draw-knife  from 
the  bole  of  a  gum  tree,  moved  through  the 
water  as  noiselessly  as  a  swimming  mallard, 
leaving  behind  it  a  long,  wavy  trail  on  the 
stilled  waters.  Jake,  the  better  oarsman  sat 
flat  in  the  stern  of  the  round-bottomed  craft, 
paddling  with  quick,  splashless  strokes.  Joel, 
the  better  shot,  was  squatted  forward.  There 
was  a  heavy,  rusted  duck  gun  between  his 
knees. 

Though  their  spying  upon  the  victim  had 
made  them  certain  sure  he  would  not  be  about 
the  shore  for  hours,  a  doubled  sense  of  caution 

led    them    to   hug   closely    the    weedy    banks. 

__  _ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

They  slid  along  the  shore  like  shadows,  moving 
so  swiftly  and  in  such  silence  that  the  watch 
ful  mud  turtles  barely  turned  their  snaky 
heads  as  they  passed.  So,  a  full  hour  before 
the  time,  they  came  slipping  around  the 
mouth  of  the  slough  and  made  for  a  natural 
ambuscade  which  the  mixed  breed  had  left 
within  a  stone's  jerk  of  his  cabin  to  his  own 
undoing. 

Where  the  slough's  flow  joined  deeper  water 
a  partly  uprooted  tree  was  stretched,  prone 
from  shore,  at  the  top  still  thick  and  green 
with  leaves  that  drew  nourishment  from  the 
earth  in  which  the  half-uncovered  roots  yet 
held,  and  twined  about  with  an  exuberance  of 
trumpet  vines  and  wild  fox-grapes.  All  about 
was  a  huddle  of  drift  —  last  year's  cornstalks, 
shreddy  strips  of  bark,  chunks  of  rotted  weed, 
all  the  riffle  and  dunnage  of  a  quiet  eddy. 
Straight  into  this  green  clump  glided  the  dug 
out  and  swung,  broadside  on,  against  the 
protecting  trunk  of  the  tree,  hidden  from  the 
inner  side  by  the  intervening  curtains  of  rank 
growth,  just  as  the  Baxters  had  intended  it 
should  be  hidden,  when  days  before  in  their 
scouting  they  marked  this  masked  place  of 
waiting  and  included  it,  then  and  there,  in  the 
scope  of  their  plans. 

There  had  been  no  hitch  or  mishap.  No  one 
had  been  abroad  in  the  late  afternoon  to  mark 
their  movements  —  and  in  a  little  while  Fish- 
head  ought  to  be  due.  Jake's  woodman's 


F  I  S  H  H  E  A  D 


eye  followed  the  downward  swing  of  the  sun 
speculatively.  The  shadows,  thrown  shore 
ward,  lengthened  and  slithered  on  the  small 
ripples.  The  small  noises  of  the  day  died  out; 
the  small  noises  of  the  coming  night  began  to 
multiply.  The  green-bodied  flies  went  away 
and  big  mosquitoes,  with  speckled  gray  legs, 
came  to  take  the  places  of  the  flies.  The 
sleepy  lake  sucked  at  the  mud  banks  with 
small  mouthing  sounds  as  though  it  found  the 
taste  of  the  raw  mud  agreeable.  A  monster 
crawfish,  big  as  a  chicken  lobster,  crawled  out 
of  the  top  of  his  dried  mud  chimney  and 
perched  himself  there,  an  armored  sentinel 
on  the  watchtower.  Bull  bats  began  to  flitter 
back  and  forth  above  the  tops  of  the  trees.  A 
pudgy  muskrat,  swimming  with  head  up,  was 
moved  to  sidle  off  briskly  as  he  met  a  cotton- 
mouth  moccasin  snake,  so  fat  and  swollen  with 
summer  poison  that  it  looked  almost  like  a  leg 
less  lizard  as  it  moved  along  the  surface  of  the 
water  in  a  series  of  slow  torpid  s's.  Directly 
above  the  head  of  either  of  the  waiting  assas 
sins  a  compact  little  swarm  of  midges  hung, 
holding  to  a  sort  of  kite-shaped  formation. 

A  little  more  time  passed  and  Fishhead  came 
out  of  the  woods  at  the  back,  walking  swiftly, 
with  a  sack  over  his  shoulder.  For  a  few 
seconds  his  deformities  showed  in  the  clearing, 
then  the  black  inside  of  the  cabin  swallowed 
him  up.  By  now  the  sun  was  almost  down. 

Only   the   red   nub    of   it    showed    above   the 
_ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

timber  line  across  the  lake,  and  the  shadows 
lay  inland  a  long  way.  Out  beyond,  the  big 
cats  were  stirring,  and  the  great  smacking 
sounds  as  their  twisting  bodies  leaped  clear 
and  fell  back  in  the  water  came  shoreward  in 
a  chorus. 

But  the  two  brothers  in  their  green  covert 
gave  heed  to  nothing  except  the  one  thing 
upon  which  their  hearts  were  set  and  their 
nerves  tensed.  Joel  gently  shoved  his  gun- 
barrels  across  the  log,  cuddling  the  stock  to 
his  shoulder  and  slipping  two  fingers  caress 
ingly  back  and  forth  upon  the  triggers.  Jake 
held  the  narrow  dugout  steady  by  a  grip  upon 
a  fox-grape  tendril. 

A  little  wait  and  then  the  finish  came. 
Fishhead  emerged  from  the  cabin  door  and 
came  down  the  narrow  footpath  to  the  water 
and  out  upon  the  water  on  his  log.  He  was 
barefooted  and  bareheaded,  his  cotton  shirt 
open  down  the  front  to  show  his  yellow  neck 
and  breast,  his  dungaree  trousers  held  about 
his  waist  by  a  twisted  tow  string.  His  broad 
splay  feet,  with  the  prehensile  toes  outspread, 
gripped  the  polished  curve  of  the  log  as  he 
moved  along  its  swaying,  dipping  surface  until 
he  came  to  its  outer  end  and  stood  there 
erect,  his  chest  filling,  his  chinless  face  lifted 
up  and  something  of  mastership  and  dominion 
in  his  poise.  And  then  —  his  eye  caught  what 
another's  eyes  might  have  missed  —  the  round, 
twin  ends  of  the  gun  barrels,  the  fixed  gleams 
[256]  ~~ 


FISHHEAD 


of  Joel's  eyes,  aimed  at  him  through  the  green 
tracery. 

In  that  swift  passage  of  time,  too  swift  almost 
to  be  measured  by  seconds,  realization  flashed 
all  through  him,  and  he  threw  his  head  still 
higher  and  opened  wide  his  shapeless  trap  of  a 
mouth,  and  out  across  the  lake  he  sent  skitter 
ing  and  rolling  his  cry.  And  in  his  cry  was 
the  laugh  of  a  loon,  and  the  croaking  bellow 
of  a  frog,  and  the  bay  of  a  hound,  all  the  com 
pounded  night  noises  of  the  lake.  And  in 
it,  too,  was  a  farewell  and  a  defiance  and  an 
appeal.  The  heavy  roar  of  the  duck  gun  came. 

At  twenty  yards  the  double  charge  tore  the 
throat  out  of  him.  He  came  down,  face  for 
ward,  upon  the  log  and  clung  there,  his  trunk 
twisting  distortedly,  his  legs  twitching  and 
kicking  like  the  legs  of  a  speared  frog,  his 
shoulders  hunching  and  lifting  spasmodically 
as  the  life  ran  out  of  him  all  in  one  swift  cours 
ing  flow.  His  head  canted  up  between  the 
heaving  shoulders,  his  eyes  looked  full  on  the 
staring  face  of  his  murderer,  and  then  the  blood 
came  out  of  his  mouth  and  Fishhead,  in  death 
still  as  much  fish  as  man,  slid  flopping,  head 
first,  off  the  end  of  the  log  and  sank,  face 
downward,  slowly,  his  limbs  all  extended  out. 
One  after  another  a  string  of  big  bubbles  came 
up  to  burst  in  the  middle  of  a  widening  reddish 
stain  on  the  coffee-colored  water. 

The  brothers  watched  this,  held  by  the  horror 
of  the  thing  they  had  done,  and  the  cranky 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

dugout,  tipped  far  over  by  the  recoil  of  the  gun, 
took  water  steadily  across  its  gunwale;  and 
now  there  was  a  sudden  stroke  from  below 
upon  its  careening  bottom  and  it  went  over 
and  they  were  in  the  lake.  But  shore  was  only 
twenty  feet  away,  the  trunk  of  the  uprooted 
tree  only  five.  Joel,  still  holding  fast  to  his 
hot  gun,  made  for  the  log,  gaining  it  with 
one  stroke.  He  threw  his  free  arm  over  it  and 
clung  there,  treading  water,  as  he  shook  his 
eyes  free.  Something  gripped  him  —  some 
great,  sinewy,  unseen  thing  gripped  him  fast 
by  the  thigh,  crushing  down  on  his  flesh. 

He  uttered  no  cry,  but  his  eyes  popped  out 
and  his  mouth  set  in  a  square  shape  of  agony, 
and  his  fingers  gripped  into  the  bark  of  the  tree 
like  grapples.  He  was  pulled  down  and  down, 
by  steady  jerks,  not  rapidly  but  steadily,  so 
steadily,  and  as  he  went  his  fingernails  tore 
four  little  white  strips  in  the  tree  bark.  His 
mouth  went  under,  next  his  popping  eyes,  then 
his  erect  hair,  and  finally  his  clawing,  clutching 
hand,  and  that  was  the  end  of  him. 

Jake's  fate  was  harder  still,  for  he  lived 
longer  —  long  enough  to  see  Joel's  finish.  He 
saw  it  through  the  water  that  ran  down  his 
face,  and  with  a  great  surge  of  his  whole  body 
he  literally  flung  himself  across  the  log  and 
jerked  his  legs  up  high  into  the  air  to  save  them. 
He  flung  himself  too  far,  though,  for  his  face 
and  chest  hit  the  water  on  the  far  side.  And 
out  of  this  water  rose  the  head  of  a  great  fish, 


FI  SHH  E  AD 


with  the  lake  slime  of  years  on  its  flat,  black 
head,  its  whiskers  bristling,  its  corpsy  eyes 
alight.  Its  horny  jaws  closed  and  clamped  in 
the  front  of  Jake's  flannel  shirt.  His  hand 
struck  out  wildly  and  was  speared  on  a  poisoned 
fin,  and  unlike  Joel,  he  went  from  sight  with 
a  great  yell  and  a  whirling  and  a  churning  of 
the  water  that  made  the  cornstalks  circle  on 
the  edges  of  a  small  whirlpool. 

But  the  whirlpool  soon  thinned  away  into 
widening  rings  of  ripples  and  the  cornstalks 
quit  circling  and  became  still  again,  and  only 
the  multiplying  night  noises  sounded  about  the 
mouth  of  the  slough. 

The  bodies  of  all  three  came  ashore  on  the 
same  day  near  the  same  place.  Except  for 
the  gaping  gunshot  wound  where  the  neck 
met  the  chest,  Fishhead's  body  was  unmarked. 
But  the  bodies  of  the  two  Baxters  were  so 
marred  and  mauled  that  the  Reelfooters  buried 
them  together  on^the  bank  without  ever  know 
ing  which  might  be  Jake's  and  which  might 
be  Joel's. 


[259] 


IX 

GUILTY    AS     CHARGED 


THE  Jew,  I  take  it,  is  essentially   tem 
peramental,    whereas    the   Irishman   is 
by  nature  sentimental;    so  that  in  the 
long  run  both  of  them  may  reach  the 
same  results  by  varying  mental  routes.     This, 
however,   has  nothing   to   do   with   the   story 
I  am  telling  here,  except  inferentially. 

It  was  trial  day  at  headquarters.  To  be 
exact,  it  was  the  tail  end  of  trial  day  at  head 
quarters.  The  mills  of  the  police  gods,  which 
grind  not  so  slowly  but  ofttimes  exceeding 
fine,  were  about  done  with  their  grinding; 
and  as  the  last  of  the  grist  came  through  the 
hopper,  the  last  of  the  afternoon  sunlight 
came  sifting  in  through  the  windows  at  the 
west,  thin  and  pale  as  skim  milk.  One  after 
another  the  culprits,  patrolmen  mainly,  had 
been  arraigned  on  charges  preferred  by  a  su 
perior  officer,  who  was  usually  a  lieutenant 
or  a  captain,  but  once  in  a  while  an  inspector, 
full-breasted  and  gold-banded,  like  a  fat  blue 
[260] 


GUILTY     AS     CHARGED 


bumblebee.  In  due  turn  each  offender  had 
made  his  defense;  those  who  were  lying  about 
it  did  their  lying,  as  a  rule,  glibly  and  easily 
and  with  a  certain  bogus  frankness  very  pleas 
ing  to  see.  Contrary  to  a  general  opinion,  the 
Father  of  Lies  is  often  quite  good  to  his  chil 
dren.  But  those  who  were  telling  the  truth 
were  frequently  shamefaced  and  mumbling  of 
speech,  making  poor  impressions. 

In  due  turn,  also,  each  man  had  been  con 
victed  or  had  been  acquitted,  yet  all  —  the 
proven  innocent  and  the  adjudged  guilty  alike 
—  had  undergone  punishment,  since  they  all 
had  to  sit  and  listen  to  lectures  on  police  dis 
cipline  and  police  manners  from  the  trial 
deputy.  It  was  perhaps  as  well  for  the  peace 
and  good  order  of  the  community  that  the 
public  did  not  attend  these  seances.  Those 
classes  now  that  are  the  most  thoroughly  and 
most  personally  governed  —  the  pushcart  ped- 
lers,  with  the  permanent  cringing  droops  in 
their  alien  backs;  the  sinful  small  boys,  who 
play  baseball  in  the  streets  against  the  statutes 
made  and  provided;  the  broken  old  wrecks, 
who  ambush  the  prosperous  passer-by  in  the 
shadows  of  dark  corners,  begging  for  money 
with  which  to  keep  body  and  soul  together  — 
it  was  just  as  well  perhaps  that  none  of  them 
was  admitted  there  to  see  these  large,  firm, 
stern  men  in  uniform  wriggling  on  the  punish 
ment  chair,  fumbling  at  their  buttons,  explain 
ing,  whining,  even  begging  for  mercy  under 
-_ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

the  lashing  flail  of  Third  Deputy  Commissioner 
Donohue's  sleety  judgments. 

"The  only  time  old  Donny  warms  up  is 
when  he's  got  a  grudge  against  you,"  a  wit  of 
headquarters  —  Larry  Magee  by  name  —  had 
said  once  as  he  came  forth  from  the  ordeal, 
brushing  imaginary  hailstones  off  his  shoulders. 
"It's  always  snowing  hard  in  his  soul!" 

Unlike  most  icy -tempered  men,  though,  Third 
Deputy  Commissioner  Donohue  was  addicted 
to  speech.  Dearly  he  loved  to  hear  the  sound 
of  his  own  voice.  Give  to  Donohue  a  con 
genial  topic,  such  as  some  one's  official  or 
personal  shortcomings,  and  a  congenial  audi 
ence,  and  he  excelled  mightily  in  saw-edged 
oratory,  rolling  his  r's  until  the  tortured  con 
sonants  fairly  lay  on  their  backs  and  begged 
for  mercy. 

This,  however,  would  have  to  be  said  for 
Deputy  Commissioner  Donohue  —  he  was  a 
hard  one  to  fool.  Himself  a  grayed  ex-private 
of  the  force,  who  had  climbed  from  the  ranks 
step  by  step  through  slow  and  devious  stages, 
he  was  coldly  aware  of  every  trick  and  device 
of  the  delinquent  policeman.  A  new  and  par 
ticularly  ingenious  subterfuge,  one  that  tasted 
of  the  fresh  paint,  might  win  his  begrudged 
admiration  —  his  gray  flints  of  eyes  would 
strike  off  sparks  of  grim  appreciation;  but 
then,  nearly  always,  as  though  to  discourage 
originality  even  in  lying,  he  would  plaster  on 

the  penalty  —  and  the  lecture  —  twice  as  thick. 
__ 


GUILTY     AS     CHARGED 


Wherefore,  because  of  all  these  things,  the 
newspaper  men  at  headquarters  viewed  this 
elderly  disciplinarian  with  mixed  professional 
emotions.  Presiding  over  a  trial  day,  he 
made  abundant  copy  for  them,  which  was  very 
good;  but  if  the  case  were  an  important  one 
he  often  prolonged  it  until  they  missed  getting 
the  result  into  their  final  editions,  which,  if 
you  know  anything  about  final  editions,  was 
very,  very  bad. 

It  was  so  on  this  particular  afternoon.  Here 
it  was  nearly  dusk.  The  windows  toward  the 
east  showed  merely  as  opaque  patches  set 
against  a  wall  of  thickening  gloom,  and  the 
third  deputy  commissioner  had  started  in  at 
two-thirty  and  was  not  done  yet.  Sparse 
and  bony,  he  crouched  forward  on  the  edge 
of  his  chair,  with  his  lean  head  drawn  down 
between  his  leaner  shoulders  and  his  stiff 
stubble  of  hair  erect  on  his  scalp,  and  he 
looked,  perching  there,  like  a  broody  but 
vigilant  old  crested  cormorant  upon  a  barren 
rock. 

Except  for  one  lone  figure  of  misery,  the 
anxious  bench  below  him  was  by  now  empty. 
Most  of  the  witnesses  were  gone  and  most 
of  the  spectators,  and  all  the  newspaper  men 
but  two.  He  whetted  a  lean  and  crooked 
forefinger  like  a  talon  on  the  edge  of  the  docket 
book,  turned  the  page  and  called  the  last  case, 
being  the  case  of  Patrolman  James  J.  Rogan. 
Patrolman  Rogan  was  a  short  horse  and  soon 
[263] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

curried.  For  being  on  such  and  such  a  day, 
at  such  and  such  an  hour,  off  his  post,  where 
he  belonged,  and  in  a  saloon  where  he  did  not 
belong,  sitting  down,  with  his  blouse  unfastened 
and  his  belt  unbuckled;  and  for  having  no 
better  excuse,  or  no  worse  one,  than  the  ancient 
tale  of  a  sudden  attack  of  faintness  causing 
him  to  make  his  way  into  the  nearest  place 
where  he  might  recover  himself  —  that  it 
happened  to  be  a  family  liquor  store  was,  he 
protested,  a  sheer  accident  —  Patrolman  Rogan 
was  required  to  pay  five  days'  pay  and,  more 
over,  to  listen  to  divers  remarks  in  which  he 
heard  himself  likened  to  several  things,  none 
of  them  of  a  complimentary  character. 

Properly  crushed  and  shrunken,  the  culprit 
departed  thence  with  his  uniform  bagged  and 
wrinkling  upon  his  diminished  form,  and  the 
third  deputy  commissioner,  well  pleased,  on 
the  whole,  with  his  day's  hunting,  prepared  to 
adjourn.  The  two  lone  reporters  got  up  and 
made  for  the  door,  intending  to  telephone  in 
to  their  two  shops  the  grand  total  and  final 
summary  of  old  Donohue's  bag  of  game. 

They  were  at  the  door,  in  a  little  press  of 
departing  witnesses  and  late  defendants,  when 
behind  them  a  word  in  Donohue's  hard-rolled 
official  accents  made  them  halt  and  turn  round. 
The  veteran  had  picked  up  from  his  desk  a 
sheet  of  paper  and  was  squinting  up  his  hedgy, 
thick  eyebrows  in  an  effort  to  read  what  was 
written  there. 

[264] 


GUILTY     AS     CHARGED 


"Wan  more  case  to  be  heard,"  he  announced. 
"Keep  order  there,  you  men  at  the  door! 
The  case  of  Lieutenant  Isidore  Weil "  —  he 
grated  the  name  out  lingeringly  —  "charged 

with  —  with "  He  broke  off,  peering 

about  him  for  some  one  to  scold.  "Couldn't 
you  be  makin'  a  light  here,  some  of  you!  I 
can't  see  to  make  out  these  here  charges  and 
specifications." 

Some  one  bestirred  himself  and  many  lights 
popped  on,  chasing  the  shadows  back  into  the 
far  corners.  Outside  in  the  hall  a  policeman 
doing  duty  as  a  bailiff  called  the  name  of 
Lieutenant  Isidore  Weil,  thrice  repeated. 

"Gee!  Have  they  landed  that  slick  kike  at 
last?"  said  La  Farge,  the  older  of  the  report 
ers,  half  to  himself.  "Say,  you  know,  that 
tickles  me!  I've  been  looking  this  long  time 
for  something  like  this  to  be  coming  off."  Like 
most  old  headquarters  reporters,  La  Farge 
had  his  deep-seated  prejudices.  To  judge 
by  his  present  expression,  this  was  a  very 
deep-seated  one,  amounting,  you  might  say, 
to  a  constitutional  infirmity  with  La 
Farge. 

"Who's  Weil  and  what's  he  done?"  inquired 
Rogers.  Rogers  was  a  young  reporter. 

"I  don't  know  yet  —  the  charge  must  be 
newly  filed,  I  guess,"  said  La  Farge,  answering 
the  last  question  first.  "But  I  hope  they 
nail  him !  I  don't  like  him  —  never  did. 
He's  too  fresh.  He's  too  smart  —  one  of  those 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

self-educated  East  Side  Yiddishers,  you  know. 
Used  to  be  a  court  interpreter  down  at  Essex 
Market  —  knows  about  steen  languages.  And 
he  —  here  he  comes  now."  ?  . 

Weil  passed  them,  going  into  the  trial  room 
—  a  short,  squarely  built  man  with  oily  black 
hair  above  a  dark,  round  face.  Instantly  you 
knew  him  for  one  of  the  effusive  Semitic  type; 
every  angle  and  turn  of  his  outward  aspect 
testified  frankly  of  his  breed  and  his  sort. 
And  at  sight  of  him  entering  you  could 
almost  see  the  gorge  of  Deputy  Commis 
sioner  Donohue's  race  antagonism  rising  in 
side  of  him.  His  gray  hackles  stiffened  and 
his  thick-set  eyebrows  bristled  outward  like 
bits  of  frosted  privet.  Again  he  began  whet 
ting  his  forefinger  on  the  leather  back  of  the 
closed  docket  book.  It  was  generally  a  bad 
sign  for  somebody  when  Donohue  whetted  his 
forefinger  like  that,  and  La  Farge  would  have 
delighted  to  note  it.  But  La  Farge's  apprais 
ing  eyes  were  upon  the  accused. 

"Listen!"  he  said  under  his  breath  to  Rogers. 
"I  think  they  must  have  the  goods  on  Mister 
Wiseheimer  at  last.  Usually  he's  the  cockiest 
person  round  this  building.  Now  take  a  look 
at  him." 

Indeed,  there  was  a  visible  air  of  self-abase 
ment  about  Lieutenant  Weil  as  he  crossed  the 
wide  chamber.  It  was  a  thing  hard  to  define 
in  words;  yet  undeniably  there  was  a  diffidence 
and  a  reluctance  manifest  in  him,  as  though 
"  [266] 


GUILTY     AS     CHARGED 


a  sense  of  guilt  wrestled  with  the  man's  natural 
conceit  and  assurance. 

"Rogers,"  said  La  Farge,  "let's  hustle  out 
and  'phone  in  what  we've  got  and  then  come 
back  right  away.  If  this  fellow's  going  to  get 
the  harpoon  stuck  into  him  I  want  to  be  on 
hand  when  he  starts  bleeding." 

Only  a  few  of  the  dwindled  crowd  turned 
back  to  hear  the  beginning  of  the  case,  what 
ever  it  might  be,  against  the  Jew.  The  rest 
scattered  through  the  corridors,  heading  mainly 
for  the  exits,  so  that  the  two  newspaper  men 
had  company  as  they  hurried  toward  the  main 
door,  making  for  their  offices  across  the  street. 
When  they  came  back  the  long  cross  halls  were 
almost  deserted;  it  had  taken  them  a  little 
longer  to  finish  the  job  of  telephoning  than 
they  had  figured.  At  the  door  of  the  trial 
room  stood  one  bulky  blue  figure.  It  was  the 
acting  bailiff. 

"How  far  along  have  they  got?"  asked 
La  Farge  as  the  policeman  made  way  for  them 
to  pass  in. 

"Captain  Meagher  is  the  first  witness," 
said  the  policeman.  "He's  the  one  that's 
makin'  the  charge." 

"What  is  the  charge?"  put  in  Rogers. 

"At  this  distance  I  couldn't  make  out  — 
Cap  Meagher,  he  mumbles  so,"  confessed  the 
doorkeeper.  "Somethin'  about  misuse  of  police 
property,  I  take  it  to  be." 

"Aha!"  gloated  La  Farge  in  his  gratifica- 
—  [267] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

tion.  "Come  on,  Rogers  —  I  don't  want  to 
miss  any  of  this." 

It  was  plain,  however,  that  they  had  missed 
something;  for,  to  judge  by  his  attitude,  Cap 
tain  Meagher  was  quite  through  with  his  tes 
timony.  He  still  sat  in  the  witness  chair 
alongside  the  deputy  commissioner's  desk; 
but  he  was  silent  and  he  stared  vacantly  at 
vacancy.  Captain  Meagher  was  known  in  the 
department  as  a  man  incredibly  honest  and 
unbelievably  dull.  He  had  no  more  imagina 
tion  than  one  of  his  own  reports.  He  had  a 
long,  sad  face,  like  a  tired  workhorse's,  and 
heavy  black  eyebrows  that  curved  high  in  the 
middle  and  arched  downward  at  each  end  — 
circumflexes  accenting  the  incurable  stupidity 
of  his  expression.  His  black  mustache  drooped 
the  same  way,  too,  in  the  design  of  an  inverted 
magnet.  Larry  Magee  had  coined  one  of  his 
best  whimsies  on  the  subject  of  the  shape  of 
the  captain's  mustache. 

"No  wonder,"  he  said,  "old  Meagher  never 
has  any  luck  —  he  wears  his  horseshoe  upside 
down  on  his  face!" 

Just  as  the  two  reporters,  re-entering,  took 
their  seats  the  trial  deputy  spoke. 

"Is  that  all,  Captain  Meagher?"  he  asked 
sonorously. 

"That's  all,"  said  Meagher. 

"I  note,"  went  on  Donohue,  glancing  about 
him,  "that  the  accused  does  not  appear  to  be 
ripresented  by  counsel." 


GUILTY     AS     CHARGED 


A  man  on  trial  at  headquarters  has  the  right 
to  hire  a  lawyer  to  defend  him. 

"No,  sir,"  spoke  up  Weil  briskly.  "I've 
got  no  lawyer,  commissioner."  His  speech 
was  the  elaborated  and  painfully  emphasized 
English  of  the  self-taught  East  Sider.  It 
carried  in  it  just  the  bare  suggestion  of  the 
racial  lisp,  and  it  made  an  acute  contrast  to 
the  menacing  Hibernian  purr  of  Donohue's 
heavier  voice.  "I  kind  of  thought  I'd  conduct 
my  own  case  myself." 

Donohue  merely  grunted. 

"Do  you  desire,  Lieutenant  Weil,  for  to  ask 
Captain  Meagher  any  questions?  "he  demanded. 

Weil  shook  his  oily  head  of  hair. 

"No,  sir.  I  wouldn't  wish  to  ask  the  captain 
anything." 

"Are  there  any  other  witnesses?"  inquired 
Donohue  next. 

There  was  no  answer.  Plainly  there  yrere  no 
other  witnesses. 

"Lieutenant  Weil,  do  you  desire  for  to  say 
something  in  your  own  behalf?"  queried  the 
deputy  commissioner. 

"I  think  I'd  like  to,"  answered  Weil. 

He  stood  to  be  sworn,  took  the  chair  Meagher 
vacated  and  sat  facing  the  room,  appearing  — 
so  La  Farge  thought  —  more  shamefaced  and 
abashed  than  ever. 

"Now,  then,"  commanded  Donohue  im 
pressively,  "what  statement,  if  any,  have 
you  to  make,  Lieutenant  Weil,  touchin'  on 
[269] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

this  here  charge  preferred  by  your  superior 
officer?" 

Weil  cleared  his  throat.  Rogers  figured  that 
this  bespoke  embarrassment;  but,  to  the  biased 
understanding  of  the  hostile  La  Farge,  there 
was  something  falsely  theatrical  even  in  the 
way  Weil  cleared  his  throat. 

"Once  a  grandstander  always  a  grand- 
stander!"  he  muttered  derisively. 

"What  did  you  say?"  whispered  Rogers. 

"Nothing,"  replied  La  Farge  —  "just  think 
ing  out  loud.  Listen  to  what  Foxy  Issy  has 
to  say  for  himself." 

"Well,  sir,  commissioner,"  began  the  accused, 
"this  here  thing  happens  last  Thursday,  just 
as  Captain  Meagher  is  telling  you."  He  had 
slipped  already  into  the  policeman's  trick  of 
detailing  a  past  event  in  the  present  tense. 

"It's  late  in  the  afternoon  —  round  five 
o'clock  I  guess  —  and  I'm  downstairs  in  the 
Detective  Bureau  alone." 

"Alone,  you  say?"  broke  in  Donohue,  em 
phasizing  the  word  as  though  the  admission 
scored  a  point  against  the  man  on  trial. 

"Yes,  sir,  I'm  alone.  It  happens  that 
everybody  else  is  out  and  I'm  in  temporary 
charge,  as  you  might  say.  It's  getting  along 
toward  dark  when  Patrolman  Morgan,  who's 
on  duty  out  in  the  hall,  comes  in  and  says 
to  me  there's  a  woman  outside  who  can't  talk 
English  and  he  can't  make  out  what  she  wants. 
So  I  tells  him  to  bring  her  in.  She  comes  in. 


GUILTY     AS     CHARGED 


Right  away  I  see  she's  a  Ginney  —  an  Italian," 
he  corrected  himself  hurriedly.  "She's  got  a 
child  with  her  —  a  little  boy  about  two  years 
old." 

"Describe  this  here  woman!"  ordered  Dono- 
hue,  who  loved  to  drag  in  details  at  a  trial, 
not  so  much  for  the  sake  of  the  details  them 
selves  as  to  show  his  skill  as  a  cross-examiner. 

"Well,  sir,"  complied  Weil,  "I  should  say 
she's  about  twenty-five  years  old.  It's  hard 
to  tell  about  those  Italian  women,  but  I  should 
say  she's  about  twenty-five  —  or  maybe  twenty- 
six.  She's  got  no  figure  at  all  and  she's  dressed 
poor.  But  she's  got  a  pretty  face  —  big 
brown  eyes  and " 

"That  will  do,"  interrupted  the  deputy 
commissioner  — "  that  will  do  for  that.  I 
take  it  you're  not  qualifyin'  here  for  a  beauty 
expert,  Lieutenant  Weil!"  he  added  with  elab 
orate  sarcasm. 

"You  asked  me  about  her  looks,  sir,"  parried 
Weil  defensively,  "and  I'm  just  trying  to  tell 
you." 

"Proceed!  Proceed!"  bade  Donohue,  rum 
bling  his  consonants. 

"Yes,  sir.  Well,  in  regard  to  this  woman: 
She's  talking  so  fast  I  can't  figure  out  at  first 
what  she's  trying  to  tell  me.  It's  Italian  she's 
talking  —  or  I  should  say  the  kind  of  Italian 
they  talk  in  parts  of  Sicily.  After  a  little  I 
begin  to  see  what  she's  driving  at.  It  seems 
she's  the  wife  of  one  Antonio  Terranova  and 
_ [271]  ~ ~~ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

her  name  is  Maria  Terranova.  And  after  I  get 
her  straightened  out  and  going  slow  she  tells 
me  her  story." 

"Is  this  here  story  got  a  bearin'  on  the 
charges  pendin'?" 

"I  think  it  has.  Yes,  sir;  it  helps  to  explain 
what  happens.  As  near  as  I  can  make  out 
she  comes  from  some  small  town  down  round 
Messina  somewhere,  and  the  way  she  tells 
it  to  me,  her  husband  leaves  there  not  long 
after  they're  married  and  comes  over  here  to 
New  York  to  get  work,  and  when  he  gets  enough 
money  saved  up  ahead  he's  going  to  send  back 
for  her.  That's  near  about  three  years  ago. 
So  she  stays  behind  waiting  for  him,  and  in 
about  four  months  after  he  leaves  the  baby 
is  born  —  the  same  baby  that  she  brings  in 
here  to  headquarters  with  her  last  Thursday. 
She  says  neither  one  of  them  thinks  it'll  be 
long  before  he  can  save  up  money  for  her 
passage,  but  it  seems  like  he  has  the  bad  luck. 
He's  sick  for  a  while  after  he  lands,  and  then 
when  he  gets  a  job  in  a  construction  gang  the 
padrone  takes  the  most  of  what  he  makes. 
And  just  about  the  time  he  gets  a  little  saved 
up  some  other  Ginney  —  Italian  —  in  the  con 
struction  camp  steals  it  off  of  him. 

"So  he's  up  against  it,  and  after  a  while  he 
gets  desperate.  So  he  joins  in  with  a  Black 
Hander  gang  —  amateurs  operating  up  in  the 
Bronx  —  and  the  very  first  trick  he  helps  turn 
he  does  well  by  it.  His  share  is  near  about  a 


GUILTY     AS     CHARGED 

hundred  dollars,  and  he  sends  her  the  best 
part  of  it  to  bring  her  and  the  baby  over.  She 
don't  know  at  the  time,  though,  how  he  raises 
all  this  money  —  so  she  tells  me.  And  I  think, 
at  that,  she's  telling  the  truth  —  she  ain't  got 
sense  enough  to  lie,  I  think.  Anyway  it 
sounds  truthful  to  me  —  the  way  she  tells  it 
to  me  here  last  Thursday  night." 

"Proceed!"  prompted  Donohue  testily. 

"So  she  takes  this  here  money  and  buys 
herself  a  steerage  ticket  and  comes  over  here 
with  the  baby.  That,  as  near  as  I  can  figure 
out,  is  about  three  months  ago.  She's  not 
seen  this  husband  of  hers  for  going  on  three 
years  —  of  course  the  baby's  never  seen  him. 
And  she  figures  he'll  be  at  the  dock  to  meet 
her.  But  he's  not  there.  But  his  cousin  is 
there  —  another  Italian  from  the  same  town. 
He  gets  her  through  Ellis  Island  somehow 
and  he  takes  her  up  to  where  he's  living  —  up 
in  the  Bronx  —  and  tells  her  the  reason  her 
husband  ain't  there  to  meet  her.  The  reason 
is,  he's  at  Sing  Sing,  doing  four  years. 

"It  seems  that  after  he's  sent  her  this  passage 
money  the  husband  gets  to  thinking  Black 
Handing  is  a  pretty  soft  way  to  make  a  living, 
especially  compared  to  day  laboring,  and  he 
tries  to  raise  a  stake  single-handed.  He  writes 
a  Black  Hand  letter  to  an  Italian  grocer  he 
knows  has  got  money  laid  by,  only  the  grocer 
is  foxy  and  goes  to  the  Tremont  Avenue  Station 
and  shows  the  letter.  They  rig  up  a  plant  and 
[273] 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

this  here  Antonio  Terranova  walks  into  it. 
He's  caught  with  the  marked  bills  on  him. 
So  just  the  week  before  she  lands  he  takes  a 
plea  in  General  Sessions  and  the  judge  gives 
him  four  years.  When  she  gets  to  where  she's 
telling  me  that  part  of  it  she  starts  crying. 

"Well,  anyway,  that's  the  situation  —  him 
up  there  at  Sing  Sing  doing  his  four  years  and 
her  down  here  in  New  York  with  the  kid  on 
her  hands.  And  she  don't  ever  see  him  again, 
either,  because  in  about  three  or  four  weeks 
—  something  like  that  —  he's  working  with  a 
gang  in  the  rock  quarry  across  the  river,  where 
they're  building  the  new  cell  house,  and  a  chunk 
of  slate  falls  down  and  kills  him  and  two 
others." 

"Right  here  and  now,"  interrupted  the  third 
deputy  commissioner,  "I  want  to  know  what's 
all  this  here  stuff  got  to  do  with  these  here 
charges  and  specifications?" 

"Just  a  minute,  please.  I'm  coming  to 
that  right  away,  commissioner,"  protested  the 
accused  lieutenant  with  a  sort  of  glib  nervous 
agility;  yet  for  all  of  his  promising,  he  paused 
for  a  little  bit  before  he  continued.  And  this 
pause,  brief  enough  as  it  was,  gave  the  listen 
ing  La  Farge  time  to  discover,  with  a  small 
inward  jar  of  surprise,  that  somehow,  some 
way,  he  was  beginning  to  lose  some  of  his 
acrid  antagonism  for  Weil;  that,  by  mental 
processes  which  as  yet  he  could  not  exactly 

resolve  into  their  proper  constituents,  it  was 
__ 


GUILTY     AS     CHARGED 


beginning  to  dribble  away  from  him.  And 
realization  came  to  him,  almost  with  a  shock, 
that  the  man  on  the  stand  was  telling  the  truth. 
Truth  or  not,  though,  the  narrative  thus  far 
had  been  commonplace  enough  —  people  at 
headquarters  hear  the  like  of  it  often;  and  as 
a  seasoned  police  reporter  La  Farge's  emotions 
by  now  should  be  coated  over  with  a  calloused 
shell  inches  deep  and  hard  as  horn.  Trying 
with  half  his  mind  to  figure  out  what  it  was 
that  had  quickened  these  emotions,  he  listened 
all  the  harder  as  Weil  went  on. 

"So  this  here  big  chunk  of  rock  or  slate 
or  whatever  it  was  falls  on  him  and  the  two 
others  and  kills  them.  Not  knowing  where 
to  send  the  body,  they  bury  it  up  there  at 
Sing  Sing,  and  she  never  sees  him  again, 
living  or  dead.  But  here  just  a  few  days  ago 
it  seems  she  picks  up,  from  overhearing  some 
of  the  other  Italians  talking,  that  we've  got 
such  a  thing  as  a  Rogues'  Gallery  down  here 
at  headquarters  and  that  her  husband's  pic 
ture  is  liable  to  be  in  it.  So  that's  why  she's 
here.  She's  found  her  way  here  somehow  and 
she  asks  me  won't  I"  —  he  caught  himself  — 
"won't  the  police  please  give  her  her  husband's 
picture  out  of  the  gallery." 

"And  for  why  did  she  want  that?"  rumbled 
Donohue. 

"That's  what  I  asks  her  myself.  It  seems 
she's  got  no  shame  about  it  at  all.  She  tells 

me  she  wants  to  hang  on  to  it  until  she  can 
_ 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

get  the  money  to  have  it  enlarged  into  a  big 
picture,  and  then  she's  going  to  keep  it  —  till 
the  bambino  —  that's  Italian  for  baby,  com 
missioner,  you  know  —  till  the  baby  grows 
up,  so  he  can  see  what  his  dead  father  looked 
like." 

Now  of  a  sudden  La  Farge  knew  —  or 
thought  he  knew  —  why  his  interest  had 
stirred  in  him  a  minute  before.  Instinctively 
his  reporter's  sixth  sense  had  scented  a  good 
news  story  before  the  real  point  of  the  story 
had  come  out,  even.  A  curious  little  silence 
had  fallen  on  the  half-lighted,  almost  empty 
big  room.  Only  the  voice  of  Weil  broke  this 
silence : 

"Of  course,  commissioner,  I  tries  to  explain 
to  her  what  the  circumstances  are.  I  tells 
her  that,  in  the  first  place,  on  account  of  the 
mayor's  orders  about  cutting  down  the  gallery 
having  gone  into  effect,  it's  an  even  bet  her 
husband's  picture  ain't  there  anyhow  —  that 
it's  most  likely  been  destroyed;  and  in  the 
second  place,  even  if  it  is  there,  I  tells  her  I've 
got  no  right  to  be  giving  it  to  her  without  an 
order  from  somebody  higher  up.  But  either 
she  can't  understand  or  she  won't.  I  guess 
my  being  in  uniform  makes  her  think  I'm 
running  the  whole  department,  and  she  won't 
seem  to  listen  to  what  I  says. 

"She  cries  and  she  carries  on  worse  than 
ever,  and  begs  and  begs  me  to  give  it  to  her. 
I  guess  you  know  how  excitable  those  Italian 


GUILTY     AS     CHARGED 


women  can  be,  especially  when  they  are 
Sicilians.  Anyhow,  commissioner,  after  a  lot 
of  that  sort  of  thing  I  tells  her  to  wait  where 
she  is  for  a  minute.  I  leaves  her  and  I  goes 
across  into  the  Bertillon  room,  where  the 
pictures  are,  and  I  looks  up  this  here  Antonio 
Terranova.  I  forget  his  number  now  and  I 
don't  know  how  it  is  he  comes  to  be  over 
looked  when  we're  cleaning  out  the  gallery; 
but  he's  there  all  right,  full  face  and  side  view, 
with  his  gallery  number  in  big  white  figures 
on  his  chest.  And,  commissioner,  he's  a 
pretty  tolerable  tough-looking  Ginney."  The 
witness  checked  an  inclination  to  grin.  "I 
takes  a  slant  at  his  picture,  and  I  can't  make 
up  my  own  mind  which  way  he'll  look  the  worst 
enlarged  into  a  crayon  portrait  —  full  face  or 
side  view.  I  can  still  hear  her  crying  outside 
the  door.  She's  crying  harder  than  ever. 

"I  puts  the  picture  back,  and  I  goes  out 
to  where  she  is  and  tries  to  argue  with  her. 
It's  no  use.  She  goes  down  on  her  knees  and 
holds  the  baby  up,  and  tells  me  it  ain't  for  her 
sake  she's  asking  this  —  it's  for  the  bambino. 
And  she  calls  on  a  lot  of  Italian  saints  that  I 
never  even  heard  the  names  of  some  of  them 
before  —  and  so  on,  like  that.  It's  pretty 
tough. 

"She's   such   a   stupid,   ignorant   thing  you 

can't  help  from  feeling  sorry  for  her  —  nobody 

could."     He   hesitated    a   moment   as   though 

seeking  for  words  of  explanation  and  extenua- 

fir? 


THE     ESCAPE     OF     MR.     TRIMM 

tion  that  were  not  in  his  regular  vocabulary. 
"I  got  kids  of  my  own,  commissioner,"  he 
said  suddenly,  and  stopped  dead  short  for  a 
moment.  "I'm  no  Italian,  but  I  got  kids  of 
my  own!"  he  repeated,  as  though  the  fact 
constituted  a  defense. 

"Well,  well  — what  happened  then?"  The 
deputy  commissioner's  frosty  voice  seemed  to 
have  frozen  so  hard  it  had  a  crack  in  it.  And 
now  then  the  Semitic  face  of  Weil  twisted  into 
a  grin  that  was  more  than  shamefaced  —  it 
was  downright  sheepish. 

"Why,  then,"  he  said,  "when  I  comes  back 
out  of  the  Bertillon  room  the  second  time  she 
goes  back  down  on  her  knees  again  and  she 
says  to  me  —  of  course  she  ain't  expected  to 
know  what  my  religion  is  —  maybe  that  ex 
plains  it,  commissioner  —  she  says  to  me  that 
all  her  life  —  every  morning  and  every  night 
—  she's  going  to  pray  to  the  Blessed  Virgin 
for  me.  That's  what  she  says  anyway.  So  I 
just  lets  it  go  at  that." 

He  halted  as  though  he  were  through. 

"Then  do  I  understand  that,  without  an 
order  from  any  superior  authority,  you  gave 
this  here  woman  certain  property  belonging 
to  the  Police  Department?"  Old  Donohue's 
voice  was  gruffer  than  common,  even.  He 
whetted  his  talon  forefinger  on  the  desk  top. 

"Yes,  sir,"  owned  up  the  Jew.  "There's 
nobody  there  but  just  us  two.  And  I  don't 

know  how  Captain  Meagher  comes  to  find  the 
__ 


GUILTY     AS     CHARGED 


picture  is  gone  and  that  it  was  me  took  it  — 
but  it's  true,  commissioner.  She  goes  away 
kissing  it  and  holding  it  to  the  breast  of  her 
clothes  —  that  Rogues'  Gallery  picture!  Yes, 
sir;  I  gives  it  to  her." 

The  third  deputy  commissioner's  gold-banded 
right  arm  was  shoved  out,  with  all  the  lean 
fingers  upon  the  hand  at  the  far  end  of  it 
widely  extended.  He  spoke,  and  something 
in  his  throat  —  a  hard  lump  perhaps  —  husked 
his  brogue  and  made  his  r's  roll  out  like  dice. 

"Lieutenant  Weil,"  he  said,  "I  congratulate 
you!  You're  guilty!" 


[279] 


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DEC          4       •jfljteC? 

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•    ' 

DEC  7  1940  M 

^UiNa 

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